


Lance: Zero Gravity

by smallshadowybird



Series: Voltron Solo Series [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Character Development, Gen, Humour, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Lance appreciation, Lance finally gets to be cool, Lance's potential, Leader!Lance, M/M, Post Season 8, Post-Canon, Space Pirate Lance, Space Pirates, but it's made during s7, but not as the black paladin, if i'm wrong, not an au, technically au for that reason
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-03 23:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15828822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallshadowybird/pseuds/smallshadowybird
Summary: The War against the Galra Empire is over, Voltron and the five Lions are honored as heroes throughout the world, and everyone is doing just fine. Snuffing out secret baddies should be their only issue, and even that's supposed to be easy. After the Empire was defeated, Lance was hoping to have more free time than he'd know what to do with, but of course, he's never really that lucky.Or, where Lance gets blasted halfway through space and gets caught with a bunch of space pirates, and things don't go nearly as bad as they could've.





	1. put your helmets on

  **VOLTRON SOLO SERIES: VOLUME 1**  
**LANCE: ZERO GRAVITY**

 _The GALRA EMPIRE is finished._  
_With their defeat, following_  
_soldiers have been forced to_  
_retreat into disclosed groups_  
_under the radar of VOLTRON,_  
_the hope of countless worlds._  
_These soldiers hide in shadow,_  
_biding materials and time,_  
_until the day they may strike._

 _Our heroes, the FIVE LIONS,_  
_bravely defend and maintain_  
_peace in the new world._  
_With the support of the_  
_general public, they track the_  
_last of the resistors, to_  
_ensure they do not rise again._

 _Shiro, former leader of Voltron,_  
_has been captured by a MERCENARY_  
_SHIP full of Galra sympathizers._  
_The Lions, desperate to free their_  
_friend, have staged an attack on_  
_the ship to retrieve him...._

 

* * *

  **Lance: Zero Gravity**

**i. put your helmets on**

* * *

 

During missions like these, Lance always wonders why the bad guys take the hard way out of everything. Because this wasn’t meant to be a hard mission.

When Shiro first brought it up, it was simple: go up, talk to the mercenaries, confiscate the weapons they were delivering to defeated Galra battalions, go home. And now that the whole Galra war business was over, Lance could return to his comfy bed, blast some music, and lie undisturbed for the rest of the night.

The leaders of the ship were supposed to be self-preserving mercenaries trying to make a few space dollars, not Galra and Galra sympathizers. Shiro wasn’t supposed to get captured. The rest of them weren’t supposed to narrowly escape with their lives, and they weren’t supposed to stage a Voltron attack on a ship to get their leader back.

Keith’s voice snaps Lance’s mind back to reality. “Lance, are you seeing any fleets exiting any of the mercs?”

Lance stops his internal grumbling for a second to survey the area. The enemy cannons shoot at them non-stop and tenfold, but that’s what makes it even weirder: other than the mercenary ships, there are no internal fighters that come out to greet them. The behaviour is typical for a carrier, with no real defense other than maybe a particle barrier, but during their brief period exploring the ship, Lance had counted fighters aplenty. He squints one more time, just to make sure his eyesight isn’t going bad, but then calls back, “I’m not seeing anything.”

“That’s weird,” Keith mutters half to himself, though it sums up Lance’s thoughts pretty succinctly.

Lance’s mind jumps from possibility to possibility as he does his best to dodge incoming attacks, but his hypothesizing takes the back burner in favour of staying alive. Luckily for him, despite where his loyalty truly lay, the Red Lion felt far smoother than Blue when it came to agility in general, and he skirts around them with less grace than Keith would’ve, but enough to keep him alive.

“The prison stronghold is in that ship.” Pidge points out.

Lance’s screen immediately creates a target that zooms and enhances the mentioned carrier in the corner of his dashboard in a light blue—no, red outline. It’s a smaller ship, but heavily guarded. After learning just who they were up against, it seemed that not even a group of low-grade mercenaries wanted to take a hostage against Voltron lightly.

His mind jumps to the answer even before Keith can speak.

Even though they’ve located where Shiro is, they’re still going to need to go and fish him out. Then, there are four lions, so Shiro’s going to need to hitch a ride in one of theirs, and it isn’t like all four of them can go in. The carrier isn’t large enough, and it leaves the lions undefended. Keith would normally be their guy for inside work, but right now, Keith is a leader. He needs to be hyper-aware of the Lions in case something goes wrong, as an ace flyer and a leader, and the best way to do that isn’t to have him rush into battle. In fact, the best answer is obvious.

When Keith’s voice does carry over, it’s after a long, hesitant pause, and even Lance can read how tentative and uncertain he sounds.

“I think I have a plan.”

Lance smiles to himself, because he knows Keith is itching to run in himself, guns ablazing, to grab Shiro and to hell with the rest. The responsibility of the Black Lion weighs on Keith, and while the former Red Paladin doesn’t seem to enjoy it, he accepts it. Keith pauses, choosing his words carefully. “We’re going to need… someone to get in and out, fast.”

“I’ll do it,” Lance says.

It isn’t that he wants to. Oh, he would love nothing more than to be the one out back, diverting the attention of random fire, shooting a bunch of smaller ships down. But he knows Keith doesn’t want to say it—he doesn’t want to condemn anyone other than himself to any kind of risk, because that isn’t how it worked with Shiro. But Lance—no, the Red Lion—is the best for the job, and Keith isn’t stupid enough not to see it. Maybe it’s because Keith’s been with Red for so long that he knows.

Keith’s reply confirms Lance’s idea, and he asks, “Are you sure about this, Lance?” After another, shorter pause, he interjects himself with another less tactful idea, “I could go in, instead.”

Lance would love nothing better than to come up with a quippy, self-assured response, but his heart won’t stop thumping and even his smile, which he’d been using to comfort himself more than others, wavers. “The Black Lion should be out here, helping with a bit of everything.” Lance explains, knowing Keith’s already thought it up.

It doesn’t make anything easier.

“I’ll be fine,” Lance replies, contrary to his beliefs. He tries to ignore the way his stomach flips and churns, because it’s probably just the effects of zero gravity and is a symptom completely unrelated to the way his hands grip firmly on the controls, wrapping around the metal as his thumbs determinedly situate themselves to accelerate. “What, think I can’t do it?” Lance asks, feigning boastfulness but listening intently for a word of denial to take solace in.

Instead of acceptance or denial, Keith’s answers, “Just be careful.” Quickly, he directs the others, “Pidge can guide you through once he’s in. Hunk can help defend the Lion once you’re inside, and Allura can fly out and take out the ships that are firing from a distance.”

Lance, rightfully surprised by Keith’s comment, is slightly more comforted by Hunk’s enthusiastic, “Don’t worry, I’ll watch your back!”

Lance gives a nervous grin to himself and then engages with Red. If Blue felt like a catfish swimming through water, the Red Lion feels like a panther. Each jolt brings him closer as the Red Lion claws through as many ships as it can. It feels rough but deliberate, resolute but cautious. It felt like the bounding of a panther from one patch of land to another, edging closer to its prey. And if nothing else, the metaphor in Lance’s head made _him_ feel a little more badass.

It takes him no time at all to reach the ship, and he uses the heat blasters from Red to carve an opening through. He sticks Red’s head through the freshly gaping hole, opening the maw of his beast to jump into the jaw of another.

His hand grips the gun tightly as he exits the ship through Red’s mouth, and his first objective is to get as far away—or as hidden—as he can. The ship’s interior is decorated in dark colours (like every other bad guy ship ever) but it lacks the purple signature light on Galra ships. It makes it easier to hide, but easier for enemies to come blasting out of nowhere like a horror movie. Along with it’s differences, the ship is also much more run-down. Visible pipes and wires run along the sides of the walls, and even the interstellar insulation shows through the wall. Electricity runs, but there are wires sticking up all over the place, and sparks fly from them. With all the boxes on the floor, along with how shaky the ground is with what’s going on outside, Lance has to be cautious.

He opts for turning the first corner he sees, but is quickly told that it’s the wrong decision as he hears voices down the hall, shouting at each other. Going backwards to an unsafe location in a mission is always a bad idea, and he takes a quick nosedive towards the nearest boxes, clutching his gun closely to his chest.

 _It’s fine, Lance, don’t worry._ Lance thought to himself. _It’s nothing you haven’t done a million times over, back as a space cadet. Sneaking past guards is no biggie._

Lance takes a deep breath to calm himself, but another voice in his head interrupts him, answering his bouts of reassurance with an unsympathetic, _Yeah, sure, except you don’t know this ship inside out and a mistake means they’re probably gonna blast more holes in you than a slice of swiss cheese, and that means Shiro’s doomed too because you couldn’t do it, you couldn’t save him, and everyone’s morale will be down and Keith will think he’s a terrible leader for sending you in and everyone will think you just couldn’t do it and they’d be right but it’ll basically be all your fault._

 _You_ really _need to shut up_ , Lance thought back at it.

 _I’m just trying to be realistic,_ the voice that needs to shut up replied.

When the thumping footsteps of the guards get close, Lance shrivels into himself as best as he can, inhaling sharply and holding his breath for extra invisibility. The guards pass right by him, and he catches sight of their backs as they run off.  Like most haphazardly-strewn mercenaries, they don’t belong to a single race. He briefly notes a Krie alien, Longor alien, and Palarian alien amongst the passing group of sentries. He breathes out an exaggerated sigh of relief as they round the corner to check out his closed-off Lion.

Keith’s voice over his communicator is almost comforting, as serious and worried as it sounds. “Lance. Are you in?”

Barely above a whisper, Lance looks around to check for guards hearing his voice. When he determines the coast is clear, he replies, “Yeah, I am.”

Pidge chips in this time. “Okay, you’re going to need to go two halls down and then three to the right.”

“My left or your left?” Lance asks, cautiously.

Instead of reassuring him, Pidge sounds exasperated and replies with her usual you’re-an-idiot tone, “We have the same left, Lance.”

In retrospect, Lance cringes, because Keith would never have had to ask that question if he were in, but he wasn’t exactly in the place to be worrying about comparisons. He ran down the corridor, turning the corner at every out-of-place sound. His caution was necessary, though, as nine out of ten times the sounds are passing sentries.

When he turns the last left, he catches an insane amount of guards and has to stifle his own surprised yelp as he cuts his momentum off to jump back behind the wall. He counts at least fifteen, all in the same place.

Quickly and anxiously, he whisper-shouts at Pidge, “There is no _way_ I can get through this hall. There’s a ton of armed guards.”

He doesn’t hear back from Pidge for a bit, but her voice does come back to him, eventually. “I can’t see another option. You’re going to have to figure out a way through.”

Lance grimaces, uncertain. If he were a little more skilled, he could just run in, sword in hand, like some knight of the round table. But Lance isn’t stupid enough to think he can take them on all at once, and especially not with the Altean Broad Sword.

He looks around, and sees no guards, obviously, since it seems they’ve all stockpiled in the corridor. However, while he looks around, his eyes fall onto the boxes next to him. He looks at its packaging, and as he bends over, he catches the white label.

  1. _con, Unit 525. To N. Tron. Extreme Light Emission, May Cause Blindness._



Lance praises every deity he can think of for the label being in English out of all things, because while the contents of the box certainly don’t contain what he _needs_ , it’s _something_ that he can make do with. He surveys the scene a little more and sees the light up above, almost metaphorically popping above his head as the idea takes form of a grin on his face.

The guards stand idly until they hear a nearby crash. Along with the sound, the light in the hallway goes out. Many of them immediately put up their weapons, assault rifles turned towards the darkness in the hall.

They look back and forth between each other until a guard in the front motions for a few others to go forward with them. Their rifles have a small flashlight on them to view the general proximity in front of them, and they stalk out into the darkness.

As they look around, they see nothing out of the ordinary, and one of them even begins to ask a doubtful, “Just a bad bulb?”

The guard beside them isn’t convinced though, as his light scans over the fallen lightbulb. He finds it odd that the string is still attached to it, and the broken end looks cleanly cut. He turns to look around, and notices an open box, too. Beside it is even stranger, as he catches a small tuft of brown hair sticking up from behind the—

Before he can finish the thought, a brilliant strobe light explodes, and surprised yells are heard from the guards caught in the blast. Lance imagines it’s something like walking out of a long movie at the theater, where you are temporarily blinded, except that he might have actually blinded them with how bright the light was. Dazed shouts are heard from the guards who had been watching intently, and the bright light fills the corridor. They don’t even register the body that bursts past them, since they all knock each other around in a blind stupor.

Lance rushes past them, his paladin visor completely darkened, and he makes his way with one hand tracing the wall for guidance. Once he’s an adequate distance past, he begins to laugh into his communicator, and eagerly shouts. “Did you see that, guys? Holy _cow,_ I didn’t think—man, that was cool!”

“Good job, Lance,” Keith says, “but don’t lose track of the mission.”

Lance gives a cockier laugh this time, his nerves finally calming down. “Ha! Don’t tell me that wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever done—ow!” His gloating falls short when the ship suddenly lurches, and he runs headfirst into a wall, falling back for a second. He sits up quickly and returns his visor to normal, picking up his bayard on the ground next to him. He can almost hear the eye-rolls on the other side.

“We’re not retelling that part later.” Lance deadpans, getting up and continuing his path.

Lance smells something strange, something burning, but before he can track what it is, Pidge speaks up. “Okay, now you’re going to run by a few more doors, but you’re going to need to turn left at the next intersection. After that, five corridors down you’re going to have to turn at the end of the hall, and Shiro should be in the third door to your left. It’s... pretty far, actually. You’ll need to hurry, too. One of our attacks hit the ship, so you have around twenty minutes. You’ll be passing by an infirmary, at least three storage chambers, the emergency escape…”  Pidge trails off at the end.

 Unfortunately, Lance isn’t able to make it that far.

When he turns the first left, he manages to take a few steps before a guard appears from another intersection, like a horror movie jumpscare, and Lance doesn’t have enough time to hide. The guard fires two shots. One misses, and he can hear the shot reverberate off a metal object behind him, but the other one hits him right in his shoulder pad—a fatal shot, if he hadn’t dodged.

Lance grimaces, ducking behind a corner. He clutches his right shoulder, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. He’s got to stay silent, and keep his mouth shut for once. As he’s shot, he hears his team’s worried shouts and questions, but can’t reply.

“Lance, are you okay?” Allura asks, her voice coming graceful and elegant over the comm, blinding him to the ripping pain in his arm for a second. He desperately wants to smile, and comebacks build up in his head— _I’m fine, princess, how’re you?—Aw, are you worried for little old me?—Maybe next time, I could’ve gotten a kiss for good luck—_ but they fall short. He doesn’t risk being discovered.

“You might’ve gotten past the earlier guards, but you’re not going to be getting past me that easy.” The guard says, and a shot skims past the corner Lance hides behind. He’s got to figure another way out of this, but he didn’t grab any strobe light bombs from earlier. His arm screams when he holds the sword, and he doesn’t even want to imagine properly handling a rifle. His adrenaline might be able to get him through, but…

Despite what Lance thought would come through the communicator, Keith, sounding very panicked and serious, suddenly shouts, “Lance, mission’s off. Get out of there, now!”

Against his better decision, Lance shouts back, “I’m fine! I can do this!”

It gives away his position unfortunately, though, and he hears the guy charge at him. He rolls out of his corner, bayard transforming into his rifle halfway through, and he manages to shoot the weapon the guard holds. The guard, successfully disarmed, lunges at Lance. While it happens, he hears the paladins shout.

“Lance, buddy? It’s not about you, it’s that you’ve just got to get off that ship, really, really fast. I know I said I’d cover you, but I… you need to get out. Shiro will… he’ll be fine! But you need to get to your lion, now.” Hunk says, and Lance is surprised. He wrestles the guy on top of him for his own gun.

“Get out of there, Lance.” Allura confirms. “The mercenary ships have turned on their own carrier. All their cannons are pointing at the carrier, and we _cannot_ lose you—”

Just as Lance begins to understand the scenario, the guy rips Lance’s helmet right off his head, rears his fist, and punches down. Lance jerks his head far enough to dodge the first one, but the other one nails him, hard. The guard tries to go in for the knockout, but is suddenly knocked out cold by a blast. Lance looks in the direction of the shot, and another guard stands, lowering the smoking gun.

Lance is confused, but the ship suddenly shakes, and the new guard runs over to Lance and grabs his hand, yanking him up.

“What—who are you?” Lance asks, still unsure whether the person is friend or foe. It isn’t unusual to make allies in the least likely of places, and it seems to be the case for this alien.

He can’t see their face, as they’re dressed like every other guard in the ship, but they sound panicked when they say, “We’ve got to get you out of here. This ship is going down—they’re going to kill us, all of us.”

Lance furrows his eyebrows, but the alien stops in front of a panel, and quickly enters a four-digit code. The door slides open, revealing an escape pod, and the alien shuts Lance in.

“What—why are you helping me?” Lance asks them as they fuddle with the controls, trying to enter the coordinates with shaky hands.

“I… I didn’t know, I didn’t think—I am _not_ going to be the reason for Voltron’s destruction.” They say, shakily and panicked. “I’ve spent my entire life… I’m not… with this, Voltron _will_ survive, I’m not going to be a part of…”

He isn’t sure what they’re trying to say, but somehow, he knows they’re sacrificing a lot for his own life. He suddenly shouts, “Wait, no! I have to get my friend, the Black Paladin! His name is Shiro, white hair, scar across his nose, the _leader_ of Voltron!”

Both of them hear a crash behind the alien, and he sees the alien stop entering coordinates. The alien presses their helmet against the glass of Lance’s pod, hand resting on top of it, defeated. Their voice is shaky, and so full of despair that Lance immediately knew it would haunt him for a long time. Their voice cracks as they say, “I’m too late.”

As they give their—what Lance comes to realize, _final_ words—he sees an explosion bursting down the hall.

A lot of things happen very quickly. The alien sends him a small, hopeful smile before they’re engulfed in flame, and Lance barely has time to register the explosion and duck below before it hits, incredulous force and heat slamming against the side of his pod.

He’s launched with more force than he’s ever used to ride the Blue or Red Lion, and his unprotected head hits the other end of the ship. Lance sees stars fly by out the window, like a million water striders streaking across the surface of a pond, tracing long white stripes across the night sky.

He thinks, for his final moment of lucidity, _Looks like I messed up after all,_ and then blacks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the chapter titles correspond to Space Oddity lyrics. I felt it was fitting. Also, the beginning of the chapter was supposed to imitate the Opening Crawl in Star Wars. This is the only time you'll see it, though, so cherish it should you enjoy it.
> 
> So the 'universe' is the same, but different, yeah? Basically, it takes place after the Galra War is over, and all six paladins are considered members of Voltron (with Shiro, Keith, and Lance alternating positions). That being said, just like Germany after the war, it's illegal for the Galra to rebuild their army, but there are always people still trying. That's why they were on the mission--they were trying to stop the mercenaries, thinking that they were just doing the job they were paid for, but it turns out the leaders were pro-Galra. Although it's being written like a Post S8 fic, I'm actually writing this at the end of season 7, so. Can't promise any accuracy.
> 
> I may or may not have made this because I wanted each character to get a little more appreciation/development, Lance especially being one of them. I almost titled it a character study for that reason, honestly. They kinda did some characters dirty. I want to write this with a Lance-ish vibe, where it's funny and adventurous and heroic and everything we didn't get in the main series (at least... so far). It'd be nice if I could write a piece that people could see being canon + a recommendation. I'm also planning on adding other characters to the Solo Series, but I'm not sure who should be next. I'd love to hear your suggestions!
> 
> Hope you enjoy! I'm looking forward to hearing thoughts/comments/ideas in the story. I like it so far, and I've got a wild ride to write. Feel free to comment!


	2. it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the people you want aren't always the people you get, but with unlikely places come even more unlikely friends. Even if Lance has to improvise to get them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally getting to the Space Pirates part of the story, let'S GOOOOO.
> 
> There'll still be a bit of exposition, but I think we're moving on to the actual adventure. One thing I definitely wanted to explore was Lance having to work without the Paladins, figure out who he is, and redefine what family's like to him. You'll see that pretty obviously in the story. That being said, although it's a solo series, the other characters make an appearance (or rather, a certain paladin) later on in the story. 
> 
> Warning: implied drunk Lance ending the chapter (but it's a pirate ship, what do you expect?)

**Zero Gravity**

**ii. it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare**

* * *

Lance figures he’ll need to move sooner or later.

As badly as he wants to move later, much, much later, he’s spent more than enough time lying down. He steels himself, inhaling sharply through his nose, and tries again to push himself up. Despite his resolve to move, every fiber of his being screams at him against the pressure he’s putting on his arms. He drops back to the ground, complaining with a small groan that fizzles out into a bit of a whine.

 _Okay, never mind about getting up_. Just a little more time.

Just like his cadet days of getting up at balls o’clock in the morning, he decides to try opening his eyes after a failed attempt at moving. He regrets the decision once he discovers that the bright sunlight promptly leads to the shriveling of his eyeballs in his sockets, and it just pushes out another cry from his body. Thinking about the situation he’s in, all he can do is give out short pathetic whines.

Actually, thinking about the situation helps to recollect himself. Currently, he is… somewhere. He’ll find that out the second he manages enough energy to get out of the pod. He traces his thoughts remembers… the explosion, the alien that helped him escape… and then…

“Shiro!” He bolts up as the epiphany hits, raising himself in one quick, adrenaline-filled go. His body still cries out in pain, but now that he’s up, it isn’t as bad. His head throbs, though, and he shuts his eyes tightly to wait for it to stop.

When he gets to a point where he’s not about to throw up, he looks around. The first thing he takes note of is that he isn’t completely disoriented; he really was at the back of the pod, and it appears to Lance like the pod itself didn’t have a very safe landing. The opening hatch faces the sky, letting more than enough sunlight in. Supplies that were meant for emergency cases are littered on the floor (the wall, maybe, at this point?) next to Lance. His eyes trail over a med kit, scattered nutrient supplements, his _bayard,_ thank god, and a few other objects written in who knows what.

That was the physical scenario. The actual scenario was much worse. There was no communicator or operable radio on the pod—not one that he could use, read, or see, at least—and he didn’t have his helmet or Lion. He couldn’t do it in the pod, but he needed to get back to Voltron.

 _Do you?_ The voice that needed to shut up earlier returns, although Lance was hoping he’d concussed himself enough in the fall to have it disappear. _Do they really need you? They said Shiro would be fine, so they didn’t need you then, and now they have Shiro, Keith, Allura, Pidge, Hunk… that’s five._

Lance chooses to ignore the voice this time, unable to refute or agree with it. It didn’t matter right now. His first goal was to get out of the ship and figure out where he was.

He takes a deep breath, and then pushes himself up. He squints at the window. Next to the blinding light is a handle, and the outline of the door is traced against the whites of the pod walls. Lance looks down at the horizontally-positioned chair. It looks fairly comfy, and if Lance had had enough time to sit on it before he was ejected into space at a gajillion miles per hour, he probably wouldn’t have been in such bad shape. He put his foot on its side and uses it to raise himself to the ceiling and opening. One hand lunges upwards and grabs the handle with his good arm (or, at least, the arm that wasn’t shot by a guard. Then again, with the amount of pain he’s in, it’s hard to tell either way) and he positions himself for a couple seconds, bracing himself for the pain that would come with exerting himself to open it.

 _Please don’t be a poison gas planet, please don’t be a poison gas planet, please don’t be a poison gas planet,_ Lance repeats in his head in a futile mantra of reassurance. If he had any luck, if god graced him with any luck at all during birth, he begs for it to be this.

Sure enough, he opens the hatch up and takes a long, deep breath. It’s now or never. If his lungs would explode or bleed or kill him, just get it over with already—

But it didn’t. In fact, it’s… fresh.

When he examines his surroundings, it is just as nice as the air. It looks almost like a beach on Earth, except the sand is a lavender and the trees, despite looking as alive as a summer’s day, look like coral-colored palm trees with some sort of low-hanging, indigo fruit. The sky is undoubtedly the best sight. It is a clear day, Lance presumes, but the sky has a beautiful gradient from yellow at the horizon breaking off into Earth’s sky blue. In place of clouds, Lance can see the outlines of neighboring planets, reflecting something that resembles the rings of Saturn in the distance, and a small mercurial planet a little further into the sky. The sight reflects off the orange-tinted water, and it was... frankly, breathtaking.

And if this planet proves not to kill him for as long as it takes him to get off it, he’ll even call it nice.

Looking at the pod’s condition is much less appealing in comparison, with black streaks covering the formerly white surface, with dark dents embedded in it and the centers showing the metallic color after the paint was rubbed off. The coordinate pad—or any electricity, really—had been completely decimated by whatever happened during Lance’s flight.

With some effort, he pulls himself out of the pod and lands in the sand. The sand does not contain poisonous scorpions that bite his legs off upon impact, nor does he cause a tremor that awakens an alien dinosaur. He walks over to the water and touches it with his pinkie toe. His face is already in a grimace, prepared for it to burn his foot off, but it doesn’t. The only downside is that it’s rather cold, but even then, it’s more of a comfortable cold rather than a freezing cold. With a bit more hope, Lance bends over the surface and splashes some on his face. As painful as it is, it’s a necessary evil, as it jolts him awake. He risks a small sip, half to check if it’s poisonous, but he does not choke. The water tastes a little tangy, like oranges, but other than that, no reaction. He begins to glean that the planet is safe, but keeps looking for the catch; the ever-prevalent catch that follows him wherever he goes.

It doesn’t come.

The water is drinkable even without boiling it, the fruit is edible, the trees are climbable, the air is breathable, the light is bearable, and there are no animals in sight. For once in his life, Lance felt hashtag blessed.

He spends the rest of the first day lying in on the beach, getting as much of a suntan as he can. Just because he’s _stuck_ here doesn’t mean he can’t _enjoy_ it, after all.

He takes a deep breath of the fresh air and looks to the sky for signs of rescue before closing his eyes. He had been through a lot, hadn’t he? Just a rest wouldn’t hurt. It wasn’t even supposed to be a rest, really, he just closed his eyes, made a soft pillow with his arms, and started breathing slowly.

So really, it wasn’t his fault the planet was so comfortable.

* * *

It takes two weeks before Lance loses it.

He sits on a deep purple rock next to the water, poking at the orange liquid with a pink tree branch. In his eyes reflect the weariness of a grizzled survivalist as he takes a swig of water out of a bowl-like object he’d made from his pod’s debris.

Survival wasn’t hard. Conditions were mostly like Earth, so all he had to do was channel his old space cadet days and remember the essentials: he’d built himself a shelter, he could make fires daily, he had drinkable water and edible food, and his bayard and other objects from the ship were more than useful and enough to help him survive. With that, there were no giant monsters. And while that was true, there weren’t even small alien monsters with some deadly gimmick out to kill Lance. In fact, there were no aliens at all. No pretty mermaids in the water, or heavenly angels in the sky. He’d settle for a harpy, at this point, if he needed to compromise. But there wasn’t anything at all. No way to ask for help, no way to contact anyone. And it wasn’t like Lance was a stranger to feeling alone, but here, he really…

“Day fourteen,” Lance announces to himself, like a T.V. sitcom he’d once seen. “Still no sign of any ladies. Or people. Or anything other than these stupid rocks—” Against reason, he kicks a rock, but instead of tumbling gently into the water, it turns out to be deeply rooted in the ground with only its surface layer visible, and he howls in pain and collapses into the sand.

Instead of continuing to focus on the throbbing pain in his foot, his arm blocks out a few of the sun’s rays as he stares up at the sky above him, empty and clear, as it always is. He looks for a sign of hope, to no avail, and grits his teeth tightly. His arm covers his eyes and blocks the tears that threaten to well up. He takes a halted, quick and shaky breath out, and then another to calm his breathing again.

“Where are you guys…?” Lance asks, to nothing, “I miss you.”

Lance isn’t sure how long he lies there. Maybe it’s a few dobashes, maybe it’s a varga, maybe it’s a few minutes, maybe it’s a few hours. It isn’t a losing scenario, anyways, since there’s nothing to do one way or another. The only problem is that his cries almost muffle up the whirring of a motor, and it almost passes him by until his eyes snap open and he sits up, stopping to make sure it isn’t just the tree branches playing tricks on him. When he realizes that the sound is accompanied by a beeping, he immediately takes off running towards it, bayard in tow.

So what if it might kill him? So what if the ship doesn’t look like Voltron’s at all? So what if it’s not even an ally ship? It’s not a Galra ship, and that’s what he really cares about. It looks more like a pirate ship and he’d frankly take space pirates over staying on this planet for even a second longer.

Lance is surprised when he sees the ship dock right above his pod, and he sees their tractor beam zone in on it. Lance chases after the ship, waving his hands frantically, yelling and screaming over and over, “Hey! Hey! I’m over here! Help!”

He learns quickly that his pleas fall on deaf ears, and his expression changes to something between anger, desperation, and determination. As fast as his legs take him, he dives not-so-gracefully headfirst into the tractor beam. His momentum comes to a gradual slow and stops near the center, and he’s pulled in behind his pod, staring up at the infrared light he’s being drawn into.

Although the ascension into the ship is slow and graceful, his arrival is not. Not even at the end of the tractor beam, Lance is suddenly yanked by a rough, lizard-like hand, and he meets two slit eyes and a face befitting the hand. The creature’s breath stinks, and Lance can see the saliva dribble off their fangs as they pull Lance close. Instead of addressing Lance, it simply stares him down with an intimidating glare before it looks out into the inside of the ship. Only the portion Lance is standing on has a spotlight under it, and the rest of the ship is shrouded in darkness.

“We picked up a straggler! What do we do with the fresh meat? Throw him out? Eat him?” It shouts.

The person the lizard-man shouts to isn’t what Lance expects. Lance hears the click of heels, accompanied by two different pairs of footsteps. When they emerge from the shadow, he sees a Galra and a Nomarian on either side of a beautiful alien girl, who struts—literally _struts_ —into the light. Her skin is a light blue, and her hair rests under a large pirate Captain’s hat, two long plumes sticking out and floating elegantly to the side. If Lance hadn’t been so terrified, he would’ve immediately rushed to her and taken her hand, giving her elegant pickup lines.

Instead, he vouches to stay silent as she rolls her eyes and glares at the lizard. “Think for yourself, would’jya?”

When she catches sight of Lance, he catches the surprise that flits on her face for but a mere moment. He grins, wondering what it was—maybe his well-toned muscles, maybe the way he carried himself with swagger—maybe she just knew who _he was,_ the Blue Paladin of Voltron. Then again, that might not have been a good thing with a Galra right next to her. Quickly, her face reverts to the usual confident and haughty demeanor from earlier, and Lance grins. Playing hard-to-get, was she?

Despite his thoughts, she grins up at him while the Lizard puts him down. She walks up to him, and without warning, her hand lashes out and grabs Lance’s chin, turning it from side to side as though he’s a specimen of some sort. She mutters an analytical, “Human, huh…” while observing him.

Even despite the dangers, Lance can’t help but utter a, “I see you’ve already got an eye for me.”

“Can it, Captain Underpants.” She replies. In return, Lance’s face heats up as he realizes he’s probably not the most attractive person in the room. He hadn’t showered for two weeks now, he had ditched his Voltron suit in favor of staying cool and is indeed in only his underwear in front of the dazzling, well-dressed woman in front of him.

Although he can think up a few more flirty comebacks, Lance stays silent for the rest of her examination. She pulls back, putting a hand on her hip. She’s grinning at him, this time, and Lance can’t help but think about how she wears her confidence and looks _hot_. “Before we throw you off, I’ve gotta know: what’s a Milky Way kid like you doing all the way out here?”

“I’m not from the milky way,” Lance corrects, still using his suave attitude, “I’m from Earth.”

Immediately, the girl looks ten times less impressed. “Earth is _in_ the Milky Way, gago.”

Before he can explain how his planet is not related to a chocolate bar in any way, one of the voices in the crowd cut through. “You call your planet _Earth?_ You might as well call it a sack of dirt!”

The crowd of pirates burst out in laughter, with one pitching in, “Isn’t Earth made outta _water_ , anyways? What kinda erkflad made up the name of that?!”

They have their fair share of laughing at Lance, with the girl in front of him not taking her eyes off him for a second. Lance isn’t sure whether to find it terrifying or hot, because she’s smirking, has an eyebrow raised and her arms folded. After a couple more seconds, she shouts, “Zip it!” and although she’s not heard at first, she repeats herself, louder, and the ship goes silent.

She looks up at Lance, face spelling out challenge in every way possible. “So, earthling,” she says, carefully, “tell me why I shouldn’t give you a little love tap on your chest right now and send you flying a few kilometers back down to that island.”

Lance’s mind immediately switches from flirt to fight. He notices the planet lying behind and below him—the same planet he’d been stuck on for two weeks, and knows he won’t survive the fall. He can tell the girl’s not bluffing, because everyone looks just as eager to see him prove himself as they do to see him fail.

“I, uh… well, um, I…” He stammers for a second, noticing the Galra staring at him just as intently, and he bites his lip. Nobody on the ship recognizes him, and he can’t tell if they were pro-Galra or against them, so he couldn’t just announce he was the Paladin of Voltron. There _was_ something that he could improvise, though, and he pulled out his bayard. “I’m… I’m, I mean, I’m a warrior. I’m a fighter. You pirates could always use someone like that, right?”

The girl gave an interested eyebrow raise, if nothing else. “And how are you, a scrawny little kid, a fighter?”

His eyes dart from side to side, observing different memories. Sure, he can think of shooting a few galra ships here and there, but what had he _actually_ done?

 _Are you even a hero?_ The voice says.

 _Not now,_ Lance thinks firmly back at it, if that’s possible, but it does the trick.

Still, the girl looks at him expectantly for an answer. He can’t think up any of his own stories, though, because all that come to his mind are… the others.

“I was… I was an ace pilot back at flight school,” Lance explains, and everyone immediately quiets. “Probably the best. I could outfly anyone. Everyone got mad at me and called me a show off because I was just so good. Then I was abducted by… uh… by Galra warriors. Forced to fight in a Gladiator Ring.”

The girl frowns at the mention of abduction. “You got anything against Galra?”

“What?! No! No, of course not! It was just... just a phase of my life, no biggie!” Lance exclaims, trying not to look at the Galra beside the girl. “After all, I won the whole thing, and so people started calling me ‘Champion’. The Galra saw I was the strongest warrior, cut my arm off, and…” Lance trails off, realizing that his arm is still very human and intact. He interrupts himself, quickly, to put the story on the right track, “and it grew back real quick! Like, it was just a quick chop. Failed experiment. My arm’s fine, as you can see.”

All the aliens aboard the ship are silent, and in awe. “I didn’t think humans had such regenerative capabilities,” the Nomarian next to the girl claims, eyes wide. “And to be here… means you must have escaped the Galra Empire at its strongest time…?”

“Yup! Yup, totally me.” Lance replies, responding as confidently as he can.

The aliens all look at him very differently now, and even the girl gives a look of surprise, if not a skeptic one. “What’s your name?” She asks.

“The name’s Lance,” he answers, winking and giving the most refreshing smile he can muster in underwear and two-week stink, “but you might hear me called ‘Sharp Shooter’.” To add to the old razzle-dazzle, he poses with his bayard, leaning nonchalantly against the wall, and it turns into an assault rifle that surprises the crew. He regrets his bravado shortly after, as pain rips through his bad arm. Even her eyes widen, and she looks at Lance with an approving smirk.

“Well, Lance,” she says, “Captain Xandra. You can address me as Captain or Xandra, I don’t care. Either way… I don’t think our ship has a human, yet. Welcome aboard the D. con.”

With that, Xandra turns tail and struts away, shouting commands smoothly, “Larinj, get the kid some clothes. And Qa’ata,” she adds, turning to the strong Nomarian who had stood by her side, “show the runt around. You two should get along nice, yeah?”  

The Nomarian, Qa’ata, gestures for Lance to follow him, gently and smiling. Lance had taken note of how composed he looked throughout the entire prove-himself ordeal, and sort of gleaned that this guy was probably the most level-headed in the ship. Lance followed him quickly, earning a few pats on the back from other crew members, looking at Lance with different forms of respect, understanding, and pride. It wasn’t something he was used to.

As they walk, Qa’ata speaks with a bit of seriousness, but doesn’t turn to look at Lance. “I respect you, Lance, but just so things are clear early on, my essence is already intertwined with Xandra.” He claims. Lance blinks for a second, unsure of what he means. Qa’ata nods, and glances over. “I think you humans call it… dating. Xandra and I are in a romantic relationship."

Lance looks blankly back at him, before flaring up in embarrassment. “Oh, shoot! No—yeah—of course, sorry!” He exclaims. He wasn’t the type of guy to hit on an… _essence intertwined pair_ , much less Qa’ata, who looked about as strong as Shiro—or if nothing else, at least as buff as him. Unlike Shiro, he wore an eye patch above a scar on his right eye, and it was definitely helping his intimidating factor. “No, we’re good. I’m not—I wasn’t—well, I was, but I—I’ve already got… well, I already like someone else, so we’re all good there.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Qa’ata agrees, blue coat falling behind him as he walks forward, “I wouldn’t want us to be on different pages.”

“Yeah…” Lance replies for quick reaffirmation and looks away. His thoughts drift to Allura, and wonders where _she_ is right now. Is she worried? Is she looking for him? Or… had she given up?

 _Maybe she didn’t care in the first place._ The voice that needs to shut up said, and Lance grows increasingly frustrated at his lack of comeback at it.

His mind wanders to the last thing that traveled over the communicator in his helmet. _We cannot lose you_ , she had said, and he couldn’t be sure, but she’d sounded panicked and worried.

 _But how far does her worry go?_ It counters.

 _I thought you were quieter than this,_ Lance complains at it. 

Qa’ata stops the voice from speaking any further by stopping in front of a door. “These are your quarters. You’ll be sharing it with a bunch of people. I’m in charge of the room itself, just so nothing… erm…” he gives a short sound, reminiscent of a cough, “weird happens during the night. I also make sure things don’t get stolen and whatnot, but I can’t make too many promises. I’d keep your gun close to your chest.” He says, looking down at Lance’s bayard. Then, he adds, smiling, “Let’s get you some clothes, why don’t we?”

Lance thinks about mentioning that he really should be getting back to his friends, and that he’d like their help, but he wasn’t about to risk walking the plank yet. He goes along with it, with a short, “Sure.” With Lance’s approval, Qa’ata opens the door, and on a bed lies an outfit. Qa’ata gives a nod, closing the door, and Lance looks down at it.

From the outside, Qa’ata can hear a few frustrated groans and crashing noises, and sends a few odd glances at the door. In a matter of minutes, Lance slams it open, looking one hundred and ten percent done with the attire, not even allowing the door to close behind him, just staring out in the distance.

“It suits you,” Qa’ata compliments. It isn’t empty, either. On top of a blue shirt, Lance adorns an army green pirate vest, decorated with adjustable belts along the chest, arms, hips, and hem of the outfit. There are also a couple on his boots, and the gloves suit him, too. The shoulder and knee pads accent strong points, and his pants are tucked nicely into his boots. He wears his outfit much better than others, notably, but it doesn’t exactly suit the expression on Lance’s face.

Lance huffs, out of fatigue or frustration is unclear, and asks, “Just _why_ do you guys put so many belts on?”

“It fits, doesn’t it?” Qa’ata replies.

“It’s _impractical_ ,” Lance argues back, but straightens anyways. Any outfit feels better than his old shorts, at this point, so he doesn’t complain too much. He makes a mental note to burn them while Qa’ata shows the rest of the ship to him.

For the most part, it’s an organized sort of chaos. Nothing is obvious to Lance, with flights of asymmetrical stairs upon flights of asymmetrical stairs, unevenly spaced doors, and crooked ceilings and floorboards, but nobody in the ship ever acts lost. When Lance hears someone call to wash the deck, crew members immediately appear, grabbing stray ropes and pulling on them to fly upwards. They all seemed to have a goal in mind, and everyone seemed to know what to do.

The ship is larger than Lance thought, as well. There are pubs and parlors, at least three washrooms on every floor, a holding unit for fighter jets, and he hadn’t even touched half the ship. Qa’ata leads Lance to one of the parlors after the tour and orders a drink for him and Lance, sitting to talk with him. At a round, crooked table nearby, a bunch of crew members play some weird variation of space poker that Lance hadn’t seen before. Lance drinks while Qa’ata talks.

“So,” Qa’ata asks, “what do you think?”

Lance jumps at the question, and shrugs, thumbing a drink. “Oh! Uh, it’s… cool. It’s really nice around here.”

It takes a few seconds of Qa’ata’s disbelieving stare, and Lance shies away from the eyebrows of disapproval. It feels like Qa’ata sees right through him, and Lance adds on, “I just miss my old friends.”

Qa’ata nods, as he’s done many times, to show his understanding. “Earlier, you said you had a girl. Do you miss her? What was she like?”

 _Oh boy,_ Lance says, glancing over at the racks of bottles lined up behind the counter, eyes tracing the various colours and shapes the liquids came in. He looks wistful, even, and takes another swig of his drink. “She was gorgeous. Strong, too. Had a bit of a temper sometimes, too, but she was always mature about everything. I’ve always been a bit of a loverboy, but…” He exhales through his nose, and his face forms a bit of a pout. “She looked so pretty when she was in love, but… it’s bitter. I really thought she was something else… and she _was_ , but… I guess she just needed something more than me.”

“Doubt that,” Qa’ata answered after a few seconds, but he didn't know the whole story. Qa'ata places his cup down. “What about your other friends?”

Lance smiled a little at the memory. “Pidge’s this small human. Former classmate at the flight academy. She’s super smart, like you wouldn’t believe. Then there’s Hunk, and he’s been with me through thick and thin… for better or for worse on his part, I guess. I’m probably a bit of a handful, frankly...” He slams his drink down on the table, and some of the liquid spills out and onto the table. “But yanno who’s a real handful? Keith Kogane, that son of a quiznack! He’s this—this half-human, half-galra guy, and he’s constantly leaving us for whatever the reason. He’s a good leader, gosh darn it, but… he didn’t want to lead, and now he does… sorta? I don’t know. I don’t even know how he’s like right now, and I’m worried out of my _mind_ over this guy, even though he’s super strong and he’s… he’s like, everything I’m not, but... he’s also just… insane!”

Qa’ata laughs in response. “Sounds like you care about this guy more than the other girl.”

“It’s cause he’s annoying! He makes me so angry!” Lance retorts. In his best mocking voice, he adds, “I’m Keith Kogane. I’m so cool and edgy. Look at me, now I’m a Blade of Marmora guy going solo because who needs a team anyways, hoo hoo, Shiro, Shiro, Shiro, blah blah blah, I was worried about Shiro too—and I know he has more reason to worry, but there’s no need to go and run yourself _dry_ for the guy, be all self-destructive and… at least he figured out who he was, or whatever, but still!” Lance petulantly frowns, raising his lower lip and furrowing his eyebrows, darting his head away in anger.

As he looks away though, he feels a strong tap on his arm. He turns to look and makes eye contact with seven eyes, looking at him as sympathetically as a seven-eyed alien can. “Hey, Sharpshooter, listen up! You know what you do in situations like these?” They ask, raising a glass. “You drink it away!”

In Lance’s head, he can almost imagine a musical number breaking out as every alien raises their class with a hearty, “Aye!” and down their drinks, but doesn’t realize until halfway through that he’s one of them. At some point, his mouth is just moving, and he’s walking and chatting up prettier shipmates, then he’s talking about Voltron and everyone (though he doesn’t remember talking about Voltron itself), and people are making fun of him the same way they always do. Calling him melodramatic and princess, and a bunch of other things, but it lacks the usual bite. The night goes on, and when he looks back at the table in front of him, there are five empty cups—or maybe that’s four? Whatever, he was awful at counting anyways.

“Leave the math to Pidge,” Lance drawled in a sing-song tone, head on the table, cup in hand. A bunch of aliens were lying on the floor, sprawled across chairs and tables. “After all, it’s not like _I’m_ a genius hacker, or great engineer, or know anything about alchemy…”

“You’re a real lightweight, kid,” one of the aliens say, laughing and jabbing him teasingly. They rub Lance’s head furiously, and he really wishes they’d stop, because he isn’t really liking the way the room spins around him anymore. The alien continues, “at least know if you ever return to your friends, you’ll be good at one thing: figuring out which gurgleshneckles mix with plegnorbs!” He announces, pouring an orange liquid into a purple liquid and downing it, burping up little rainbow bubbles.

“I’m not good at anything,” Lance complains, “or… I am, but I’m not the best. If they want something done, they can always go to someone else. I… they don’t need me, they’ll be fine… they’ve got Shiro, and Keith, and Allura, and Pidge, and Hunk…”

Qa’ata pats him on the back, and Lance had admittedly forgotten he was still there up until that point. “You’re a good guy, Lance. Let’s get you back up to—”

“You don’t need ‘em!” A voice shouts, raising their fist but not their head from the table, “Forget those guys!”

Their chants are joined in by a bunch of others, raising their hands in unison. One hugs Lance, and another nearly topples him, and quite a few others join him too. It’s a little suffocating, to be honest, but Lance doesn’t feel unwelcome. He just feels a little… reminiscent. Like when he had gone home, to Earth, and his nephew and niece would…

“You don’t need a bunch of losers who don’t need’jya,” one of the aliens say, “we’ve gotcha now! You’re part of _our_ family!”

Through Lance’s hazy vision, whether it’s from whatever was in those drinks or the tears that had been brimming in his eyes, he sees a familiar figure look over at him from the doorframe. He catches indigo lips in a small smirk, and closer to him, he sees Qa’ata looking over at the figure, shrugging. Before he can make out what it means, or decipher it, Lance closes his eyes.

“Yeah, family.” Lance says, raising the glass to his lips once more, but he doesn’t recall actually drinking it before gravity gives up on him and he can’t exactly tell if he’s standing, but he feels strong arms in front of him, holding him, and he closes his eyes to end the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can tell by the tag, this story is Lance-centric, but as a social person, I couldn't leave him isolated forever. It's a solo-series because it refers to Lance having an adventure without the members of Voltron, like how Keith was, and I thought pirates would be the coolest. Firstly, there's Lance's ties to the Blue Lion and water/ice, then there's the way of 'no plan, pirate do as pirate please' in fun improv, and the entertaining but savage sense of camaraderie aboard the ship. 
> 
> That being said, I don't think Lance is very OOC--right now, he's away from his friends and even further from his family. He's used to there being some way to communicate with them, or a time where they miraculously find him, but there isn't. Isolation probably didn't do wonders for him, either. So now he's stuck on a dangerous ship, lightyears away from Voltron, while nobody came for him, and still trying to make do with what he's got. He's kind of trying to cope with his lost 'family' by creating this temporary replacement, even if he doesn't realize it. If you disagree, though, please comment or contact me at my tumblr (smallshadowybirds).
> 
> On another note, get ready for the widest assortment of alien cast since Star Wars; some that you've seen, some that you haven't. There'll be a lot of aliens popping up throughout the story, but only two that are actually significant (guess who).
> 
> #SSB


	3. floating in the most peculiar way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When everything seems to be going terribly, never forget how to wash your hair. As long as you remember that, you can save lives, make a family, and pillage a few evildoers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In for another edition of Lance out in space, along with severely made up alien concepts of distance, food, and insults. (FYI, it probably doesn't end here. Think of it like Rick and Morty adlibs). Seriously though, alien names are very fun to make, I do recommend. Drop them in the comments if you think up any good ones! 
> 
> Warnings: Multilingual vulgar language! (For reference, it's Spanish/Tagalog and Altean, thrice).

**Lance: Zero Gravity**

**iii. floating in the most peculiar way**

* * *

Lance can withstand the heat of a Kyblerian Zargnut for around twenty seconds before fire spews from his mouth. He lets out a rooster-like indignant squawk, breathing with his mouth in a large O to try and cool it, and his hand zips for the bottle of water his shipmate holds. The rest of the ship is howling in laughter, more so at him than with him, but simultaneously give him hardy thumps on the back. Lance spit-takes the first drink to get the heat out, and then chugs the next.

“Not bad, for an earthling!” Some alien yells and gives Lance a pat hard enough to knock him off the stool he’d been sitting on.

Some pretty alien laughs at his antics, and in one swift motion, Lance drops the glass on the table and grabs another Zargnut. He casually sidles up to her, one arm on the countertop and the other holding the nut between his index finger and thumb. With half-lidded eyes, he contacts her amber eyes. “I could take at least three more for someone like you.” He says, and she laughs. Lance can’t decide if she’s into it or laughing at him, but he gathers that it’s somewhere in the middle.

“You don’t need to.” She replies. She pops one in her own mouth, waits a few seconds, and then starts happily chewing. Lance stares at her, mouth agape, half disbelieving but half impressed. She laughs at his expression again, but explains her magic, “If you take a few seconds to let the outer shell disappear and then bite into it, it gives a sweet taste.”

“For reference, boy,” another, stronger alien adds on, “if you pop the stem out, like this—” to demonstrate, the alien rips the stem off the nut. The nut swells, as though its contents have just expanded in every direction, and then it explodes completely. Lance’s face stings from the force as juice splatters across the entire parlor, covering everyone in the liquid. There’s a beat of silence as everyone stares, stunned, but then the room is back into erupted laughter. “The whole thing explodes!”

Lance laughs, then realization pops into his mind. “Wait! C’mon, now I’ve gotta get changed!” He complains.

The strong alien jabs Lance in the side, knocking the wind out of him. “Oh, is our little boy upset he got some orange on his breeches?” They say, with a large guffaw. “Little Lancey-Lance has always gotta be dolled up for the ladies, right?”

Lance pouts, getting up to leave the room. He watches as they go back to talking amongst each other, lively as ever.

Over the past month, Lance had gotten used to the dynamic of the ship, and jokes at his expense were common. At the same time, though, they were common for everyone. So was the amount of respect Lance got, even if it was for achievements that he didn’t actually accomplish. They’d teach him little things from their planet, and he’d tell them stories and tricks from Earth. It wasn’t Voltron, but it was something.

Thinking about Voltron, Lance still hadn’t had the chance to ask the Captain to return to them. Each time he’d asked Qa’ata for help, Qa’ata would sheepishly look away, mention that Lance would need to talk to Xandra, and quickly change subject. Of course, Lance wasn’t stupid enough to guess it was a taboo topic. He just didn’t know how to bring it up to her, as she’d been constantly occupied with something or other, whether it was a mission, managing the crew, or something else entirely.

While heading to the showers, Lance passes by the Captain’s quarters. Before he makes it across, he hears two distinct voices from inside, and stops to look at the metal door. He peers through the window and sees Qa’ata and Xandra, positioned around a table. He catches Xandra looking up, and quickly ducks behind the window’s opening—a skill he’d picked up from the Garrison.

There’s a small silence that passes, and Lance begins to leave. He isn’t about to intrude in their relationship, and he knows when he’s being a bother. Before he goes, he hears Xandra. “Anyways, like I was saying, the kid’s a great asset. If he knows Galra systems inside and out, too? Brilliant. Plus, no prey, no pay. That’s how we work.”

He hears Qa’ata respond, and despite the usual nice-guy voice Lance is accustomed to hearing, Qa’ata sounds serious, strong, and firm. “He’s just a boy. Someone who got mixed up in all this. He doesn’t need to be involved any more.”

“I know that,” Xandra answers, “but just this once. Maybe he’s like you. He called himself a fighter, Qa’ata. Maybe he’s got that same thirst for adventure.”

There’s a long silence, and Lance hears footsteps. He doesn’t think about it until their volume increases, in a crescendo, as a heavy alien nears the door. Lance starts to go, but he hears one last thing.

“Just this once. I know he’s capable… and I trust you.” Qa’ata says, voice edging his usual softness near the end. Before the door opens, Lance has sprinted behind the corner, slowing to a speedwalk once he’s out of Qa’ata’s sight.

As Lance turns to enter the showers, he marches right into the stomach of a Balmeran. The Balmeran looks surprised for a moment and puts a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “Lance! It’s great we found you for the mission. Are you getting ready?”

Lance’s eyes widen as he recalls the talk he’d just eavesdropped on. The dots begin to connect, and he splutters. How did it get out so fast? He thought he’d at least have a little bit of time to himself, maybe to figure out a way to stay uninvolved, but how? “I—what?”

The alien notices Lance’s confusion and furrows his eyebrows. “The mission, of course. There are a bunch of ravagers going around, and we’re going to take their weapons and stop them. You’re supposed to be head of the mission.”

“What?!” Lance exclaims, taking the Balmeran’s hand off his shoulder in a panic. “Head of the mission—what do you mean?! I haven’t gone on _one_ mission, why are you making me the head of one?”

“You’re the champion, after all. We took you in, too, so you better not go soft on us!” He replies, as though it’s obvious. He walks past Lance, tipping his fingers off in a goodbye salute. “Go wash up, and I’ll meet you in the stronghold.”

Lance stares at the back of the Balmeran, mouth still agape and disbelieving. He blinks once—twice, just to make sure the interaction was real and not a horrible, twisted hallucination, and… nope, the Balmeran is still walking away from him.

Lance begins to regret using up his luck on staying safe on that boring, empty planet.

* * *

“Alright, listen up, you guys.” Xandra exclaims. She’s got a foot up on the table, right next to the box projecting the map in the air, and the other foot lies at her side. She looks over at everyone from under the brim of her hat, smirking with a glint in her eye. “Lance, you and Qa’ata will cause a commotion in the lobby. The biggest you possibly can, because we’ll be taking out the weapons unit. Then, you two will separate from your men and Qa’ata will hack into the vault. Lance, all you’ve gotta do is cover them. My troop can come in with the bags, grab as much as we see, and then we scram. Sound easy?”

Everyone is silent, so Lance is assuming he’s the only one who sees that there are a million things that could go wrong. He doesn’t feel like being the odd one out—not in a room full of scrutinizing eyes—so the room stays in silence. He glances over at Qa’ata, who scans the map with his pensive index finger resting along his bottom lip.

Xandra seems to notice Lance’s discomfort, but instead of reassuring him with tales of his fake glory, she glares at him. “What? Don’t tell me you’ve got cold feet now, punyeta.”

Immediately, any intimidation Lance had felt melted into confusion. If Lance had been any less attentive, he would’ve marked her insult off as another alien word, but instead, he furrowed his eyebrows. His mother normally would’ve had words for him if she ever heard him repeat it, especially around children, but he looked at Xandra with a raised eyebrow. “Puñeta?” He asked.

For a second, he catches recognition in her eyes. She scans the room quickly, at the aliens surrounding them, as though she’s caught red-handed. Lance prepares to comment on it, but she smirks back at Lance, interrupting him. “Huh, guess you’ve got a brain in there after all,” she jeers, pulling the tricorn hat over her eyes. She takes her energy pistol off the table, dumping it casually in her holster. “You’re with Qa’ata, and Qa’ata’s my first mate. You’ll be fine.” She reassures him and exits the door. Her group follows her.

The change in subject doesn’t exactly go unnoticed by Lance, but she’s already out the door. He turns towards Qa’ata, who watches her exit. Instead of making eye contact with Lance, he suddenly claps his hands, and everyone in the room—including Lance himself—jumps in attention. “Alright, you heard the Captain. Let’s head out.”

Finally, Lance receives his first notion of acknowledgement as Qa’ata pats his back reassuringly on his way out, and Lance stands. There are still quite a few aliens in the room, and he presumes they’re watching Qa’ata leave before the door shuts.

Oh, right. They’re waiting for him.

“You heard the guy, let’s go!” Lance says, feigning as much confidence as he can muster. To his surprise, they all instantly break the silence with cheers. They nearly trample him but end up pushing him out the door with their enthusiasm. Luckily, Qa’ata had apparently anticipated it, and pulls Lance out of their warpath the second he’s out the door. The aliens don’t even notice their leader’s disappearance and continue onto the main mission ship like a crowd of rioters. Lance shudders at the thought of what would’ve happened, had he stayed.

When Lance looks up at Qa’ata, the Nomarian meets his line of sight. Although there are a million other questions Lance should be asking, he finds himself wondering if he’s supposed to look at Qa’ata’s eye, or the eyepatch. Despite his dissonant inner monologue, very calmly, Qa’ata asks, “Are you alright?”  

Lance thinks about coming clean right then, but a shout quickly snaps them out of their moment. “Hey, get over here already! We’re leaving!”

Qa’ata gives Lance a sincere look, more sincere than Lance is used to, but they both board the smaller spacecraft without another word. They sit side-by-side as they take off, with Xandra at the hull of the ship standing behind something that vaguely resembles a ship’s wheel.

Xandra fires a few shots of energy into the air, and they come out with cannon-like explosions. The rest of the crew imitates this with their own weapons and flags, shooting whatever they’re holding out into space as they rush past. It’s lively, and Lance would’ve normally participated, if not for the sinking worry that he’d have to lead them into a battle the moment they land. Lance’s heart runs a mile a minute, because although he’s been on a million Voltron missions before, he was pretty sure that pirate pillaging was an intergalactic crime and—and yes, he’d done similar things before, but back then, he was always sure he’d done it for the good guys.

Here, he’s a leader of _bad guys_ , like… like Zarkon, or Sendak. And both parts of that sentence were problems: bad guys being the most obvious, but leader was the other. As much as Lance wanted to lead, he’d wanted to lead _Voltron_. He didn’t plan on having to lead an assortment of aliens into a crime. One that could cost them their lives, and one where he had far less expertise. If his family saw him now, at least one of them would’ve given a good whack to the head and asked what he was thinking.

Oh man, this was a terrible idea.

Lance isn’t sure how much time passes before he hears the Captain yell, “We’re here!”

Everyone on the ship starts whooping and cheering. _Lance_ is normally the person to participate in the ya-hooing and insanity, but he also isn’t used to everyone around him being at least twenty point five times more insane than he is.

Before he can make heads and tails of what’s going on, the hatch behind him opens, and a large gust of wind hits him briskly in the face. The sounds of an alarm get louder, and red lights colour the ship, matching the bloodthirsty smiles of the aliens next to him. He looks down, and it seems like they’re above a facility. The captain struts up to him, gun in hand, and smirks at him. “Ready, _Sharpshooter?_ ”

Lance laughs nervously but looks outside to assess the scenario. “Are we going to land?” Lance yells over the engine’s loud and methodical hum, increasing his volume now that the hatch had been opened. He can’t hear her response, but he sees her double over in laughter as she walks past him. He turns, confused, and then she jumps.

He lunges to grab her a moment too late. He watches her fall, but then she turns in the air and shoots one of her guns, which latches onto the ledge of the opening. Before he can react, a bunch of crew members do the exact same thing, throwing themselves out of the ship like suicidal maniacs. Some are large enough to brace the impact, and others follow Xandra’s method of ziplining down. They streak across the sky, like little toy army men or a chain of monkeys.

Lance stares, disbelievingly. He’d done some pretty insane things—Pidge and Hunk could vouch for that, especially in simulations—but trying to rob a place with the alarm already tripped sounded high near impossible. It didn’t fit with the plan at all. He hadn’t been told about this.

Qa’ata pats his back, reassuringly, and then passes Lance a grappling hook gun. “You’ll be okay, right?”

“Uh, yeah.” Lance responds confidently, though it comes off far more nervous than he expected.

Qa’ata gives a bright smile, which is somehow the most comforting gesture he’d received since he boarded the ship, and pats Lance on the back with a sympathetic stare. “You know, Xandra thought we’d get along. I was captured by Galra ships, too. Lost my eye.” It dawns on Lance exactly what Qa’ata is saying—using to connect with him. “I managed to get out. Glad I wasn’t the only one,” he says. Qa’ata jumps next, and his own section of the crew follow him.

The voice in his head doesn’t even need to chip in for Lance to think he’s garbage for letting Qa’ata believe his lie. Still, Qa’ata is gone, and the crew behind him look towards him, expectantly.

Then, Lance steels his nerves, and jumps. _Okay, this isn’t too hard. It’s just repelling out a ship_ , he thinks, and it’s nothing he hasn’t done a million times before. Surprisingly, the voice that needs to shut up doesn’t counter him. He twists halfway through the fall and shoots the gun, and a hook and rope burst out of it. It slows his descent well enough for him to tuck-and-roll the impact of the rest of the landing. His crew follow, as the metal on the rooftop they’re on creak under the force of some of their jumps, and they give their own different battle cry before running in. Lance grips his bayard, and it transforms into the Altean Broadsword this time. Okay.

When Lance dashes inside, the interior of the building is more insane than the exterior. Space pirates fill the hallways, breaking into different doors. The lights periodically change from a blaring red to submerging them in complete darkness, aside from the bursts of light that some of the guns produce. Each time the hall is lit up again, it’s a completely different scene that Lance has to take in and assess. One second, an Olkari is running inside one of the rooms next to him at the entrance. The next time the light turns red, the same Olkari is down the hall, commanding something that looks like a venus fly trap to eat one of the robotic sentries. Along with the lights are the sounds, with an alarm more annoying than his morning clock at the Garrison’s being projected at a minimum of a bazillion decibels, accompanied by the shouting of forty or so aliens at the same time. It’s a cacophony of chaos, and while Lance can’t even say it’s the craziest thing he’s been in, it comes close.

It’s utter chaos.

Before Lance can adapt, Qa’ata thumps him on the back and runs by him, navy blue braid of hair trailing behind him. He shouts, “Come on!” And turns into one of the rooms. Lance follows him, ducking under flailing arms and haphazard shots, and he doesn’t shoot because he can’t tell who’s friend from foe quite yet.

The room they enter is much quieter, and he closes the door behind him only to catch Qa’ata taking out the other guard with his dagger. Without so much as acknowledging Lance, he runs up to the security system and begins typing away on a pop-up projection screen.

Lance, somewhat more casually than he’s supposed to, walks up to Qa’ata. Unsure of what exactly he’s there for, he looks over at what Qa’ata’s doing only to find alien jibberish flying by on the screen, going by a thousand miles an hour as Qa’ata’s eye darts back and forth.

“So…” Lance says, trying to make small talk, “why does Xandra—er, Captain Xandra—why does she know Spanish?” When Qa’ata doesn’t respond, Lance fills in the time by adding synonyms. “¿Por qué ella habla español?”

“She doesn’t.” Qa’ata responds, tersely, after another pause. Lance has the feeling he’s intruding, but Qa’ata simply interrupts his next question with, “Go watch the door.”

Fulfilling his duty, Lance’s bayard changes into an assault rifle and he aims it towards the door. Things are easy like this. He had a feeling the mission would’ve been harder, but there seemed to be a larger element of improv involved in pillaging in comparison to Voltron missions. Outside the door, he can see shadows of people passing, and the room is quietly drenched in a blue light from Qa’ata’s screen. It’s much calmer in comparison to the outside, and the silence invites Lance to talk.

“I mean, it _sounded_ like she did.” Lance explains, oblivious to the subject change, “It was pretty vulgar, too. Unless you guys have something that sounds Spanish. Do you speak Spanish, too?”

Before Qa’ata can reply, a hard thumping is heard on the door and Lance catches an alien slamming into it. As the alien that obscured his vision falls, he can see the others outside running in different directions, and it takes him a second to understand what they’re saying — “Reinforcements”— “Get out” — “Shoot ‘em”…

He looks hesitantly at Qa’ata. “Uh, is that supposed to happen?”

Qa’ata tears his eyes away from the screen for a moment, and glances at the door. “Quiznak,” Lance hears Qa’ata mutter under his breath as he collects the computer chip and his bag. The projection gets sucked back into the block he holds, and into the palm of his hand. In his other, he holds his dagger. “C’mon, this is where your leadership skills shine—”

Right as they open the door, they’re met at the business end of two guns, and Lance blinks a couple times before they shoot.

The world goes blue as electricity arcs across his body, and he feels he’s had the butt end of the electrocution joke for way too long before he blacks out.

* * *

When Lance comes to, groggily, he opens his eyes. It’s not nearly as bad as getting out of the crash-landed pod, so he bears it. The flashing lights disorient him a little, but at least the sound’s dissipated. The only shouts he can hear are down another hall, and distant and echo. He manages to look around. The bodies of different crew members litter the ground, along with Qa’ata next to him. He _must_ be disoriented, since Qa’ata seems to have two little triangles of dirt on his cheekbones and his ears weren’t that pointed earlier. Lance shakes him, and Qa’ata groans in response.

When Qa’ata raises his head, the marks that Lance hallucinated on his cheek have disappeared, and his ears look just as large as they had earlier. “Lance?” Qa’ata asks.

“I’m here.” Lance replies.

Unlike what Lance thought would’ve happened, where Qa’ata would recollect himself and figure out what to do, he was greeted with a frown. “What are you doing? You’ve got to help the others.” Qa’ata sat up and seemed to look around the floor for something. “This is why I didn’t want to bring you along…”

Lance blinks, because _well, duh. Of course, you want experienced fighters to come along_. He didn’t expect the pang in his chest to come with it, and even then, Lance can’t exactly pinpoint _why_ it hurts. Is it because he doesn’t want to be the deadweight? Is it because he’d lied, and everyone had trusted him anyways, and now they’d all paid for it? He looks around the room at the aliens. He had thought they were knocked out, like he was, but by the way some of them weren’t moving, he couldn’t be sure.

“I—Qa’ata, I have to tell you…” Lance interrupts. His eyes look down to the side, and he’s not fully thinking about the consequences of what he’s about to come clean for, but he knows that he can’t risk something like this happening again. “I’m not the champion.”

Qa’ata stares, eyes furrowing, and Lance feels obligated to explain further. “I mean, I know how to use a gun and sword and pilot. I know how to fight, but… but those things didn’t exactly happen to me. I never lost my arm. I’m… just a guy from Cuba.” He explains.

He stays silent as Qa’ata looks at him, and if he thought Qa’ata had been looking through him earlier, Lance was transparent now. A few seconds pass, and he can’t make eye contact. He just stares, dejected, down at the floor.

 _Guess who’s getting turned into a pirate shish kebab tonight?_ The voice asks, finally making its glorious comeback.

Before Lance can agree, he feels the hand on his shoulder grip tighten. Lance whips his head up, making eye contact with Qa’ata. The Nomarian looks serious, but there’s a hint of sympathy still there. Lance just isn’t sure why.

“Lance,” Qa’ata starts, “I don’t really care if you’re the champion or a fighter or not.”

Lance looks at him, confused.

“Right now, our crew is still battling it out, out there. We still haven’t gotten what we came for, and there are still members who are looking to _you_ for guidance.” Qa’ata replied. “You might not be ‘The Champion’, but I’m a Nomarian engineer slash hacker who can’t shoot a gun for their life. We’ve got a Balmeran without arms. We have an Olkari who can’t use a computer. It doesn’t matter who you are, they’re all fighters. They’re all valuable members. Even Xandra isn’t what she seems like. If you don’t think you can do it, then don’t. Stay here, and we’ll figure things out. But if you want to hop back in—if you want to save everyone—it’s not too late. I wouldn’t have let you come if I didn’t think you couldn’t handle it. So, what’s it going to be?”

Lance takes a few seconds to process Qa’ata’s words, properly. It’s the first time in a long time, Lance realizes, that he’s ever been given a real out.

Lance holds up his hands, revealing the handcuffs. “But how do we get out of _these_ ,” he asks.

It’s certainly not the first time he’s been handcuffed, and probably not the last, but Qa’ata smiles, knowing that Lance has indirectly answered his question. Qa’ata looks around, and his eyes fall on his dagger. He gestures to it, and Lance twists his body around to grab them with his feet.

“Xandra will come back for this group,” Qa’ata explains as Lance raises his feet to grab the knife with his hands. “When she does—”

“Stop right there!” A guard yells, walking into the room. Qa’ata kicks the knife out of Lance’s hand, but into Qa’ata’s reach. “Move and I’ll shoot! You’ve locked out the system. Tell me the code now, or I’ll shoot! What’s the secret?!”

Not all the sentries are robots, Lance takes note, which means it’s a poor facility. But then he also notices that the guard is wearing the Galra Empire uniform that he’d grown used to for the past however long he’d been fighting as Voltron.

They—these pirates weren’t the bad guys. They were good guys, stealing from the bad guys.

He sees Xandra coming from the other side of the hall, but the guard hasn’t noticed her yet. Qa’ata looks at Lance, panicking. Luckily, Lance knows exactly what to do. He looks around the scene and gleans a bit of information. There’s the room that the guard just came from, and Xandra should be right in his peripheral…

Lance lies down on his back for a second, curled into a roly-poly sort of stance, before whipping up and onto his feet in a crouched position. He gets up from there, raising his arms for extra effect. Qa’ata looks at him like he’s insane, and Lance figures that yeah, he’s probably just as insane as the rest of them. As loud as he can, he shouts, “Primero, debes enjuagar tu cabeza!”

The guy touches his transceiver. “Did you get that?” He asks, lowering his gun. “Keep going!” He shouts at Lance.

Lance, thoroughly confident that the guard believes he’s entering some sort of code, and continues, rattling off in Spanish, “Luego, te aplica champú en el cuero cabelludo. Mantenga el champú encendido por un minuto. No se apresure. Luego, enjuague el champú por completo. Repita el proceso con el acondicionador!”

Unless the guard is interested in knowing the secrets to hair like his, it isn’t a code.

The guard waits a few seconds, and Xandra comes up behind him, pulling her gun out of the holster. He gives a frown, and then a frustrated growl. “It’s the wrong secret! You—” The guard suddenly stops talking as he shines a light on Qa’ata, who is holding the knife. Before he can speak, Xandra shoots him, right in the back, and the guard falls to the ground.

“Qa’ata,” she says, laughing like mad, “I’m inviting Lance to our wedding.”

Qa’ata sighs, complaining about something that sounds like, “I haven’t even proposed yet,” and when his knife makes contact with Lance’s handcuffs, the electricity between them fizzles out and the metal unlatches.

Xandra runs ahead anyways, and Qa’ata follows her. Lance reaches down to grab his bayard before coming after them. Qa’ata pulls out another science gizmo and types furiously on it. The doors in front of them open when he does, and they rush forward into a room of more chaos.

The guards are all entering through one door, and the crew ducks for cover under various upturned objects—tables, counters, corners—trying to shoot the guards. Once entering, Xandra and Qa’ata follow suit, hiding behind the nearest table they can find. Lance looks for a second, and it’s a little like looking at a _Where’s Waldo?_ picture with how much is happening, but once he steps in, he takes aim at the giant light hanging on the ceiling that a couple of monkey-like crew members are swinging from, firing shots.

“Move!” Lance orders, and the two primates jump in separate directions. Once he’s got a clean shot, Lance fires at the rope, and the entire thing falls in the doorway, crushing a couple robots and blocking the rest of the entrance. Everyone stands, stunned, not having something to shoot at for a second. Lance looks over at Xandra, and he looks uncertain but finally has his head in the mission. “That’ll only hold them for a bit, I think. They should be able to push it over eventually.”

Xandra blinks at him, but then looks at the situation seriously. “My crew, keep the door shut with the weapons y’all got earlier. I’ll take your crew for it, too, Lance. Qa’ata, how fast do you think you can hack into the system?”

Qa’ata thinks for a second, and then answers, “Give me two uninterrupted dobashes, and their loot is ours.”

She grins, and then looks back at Lance. Lance smiles awkwardly at her, and she has to restrain a laugh as she throws him a key card. Lance looks down at it, respectfully confused, and she raises an eyebrow at him. “You said you were a pilot, right?”

Lance looks around, seeing no opening for the ship to come in through. “Uh, how do I bring that spacecraft into this room?”

She smiles at him. “The tunnel we got through? Its dimensions are sixteen by twenty hijarns. Our ship’s dimensions are fifteen by nineteen. And don’t worry, I’m coming with.” He looks at her like she’s insane, as it’s barely a proper fit, but she pulls him through the door and shuts it behind them, teasingly asking, “didn’t you call yourself the ‘tailor’ because of how well you could tread the needle?”

“Uh, yeah, duh!” Lance replies, suddenly stepping up to the plate after being challenged. At the same time, he makes a mental note to watch which stories he tells others, especially while at the parlor.

 _Except you’ve failed it countless times in the simulation,_ the voice that needs to shut up says, back at it again, _and if you’ve forgotten, the reason for it was that everyone would’ve crashed and died._

 _Well, good thing this isn’t a simulation,_ he responds, the same way he had the first time he was questioned on it, _I always fail those._

They run over to the ship and Xandra hits a few buttons. Lance puts the card in and the ship whirrs to life, screens flickering blue in front of them. The light is comforting, and while a sailor’s wheel is very different from the dual-wield that the Lions have, he manages to shift it enough to turn the ship around. They plunge downward, towards the opening tunnel, and if he weren’t flying he would’ve been shrieking and holding something. Instead of what Lance would’ve done, Xandra walks right next to him, putting a hand on the wheel to help him. On her face is her cemented smirk, and they dive right into the tunnel.

“We’re gonna need to stop the momentum when we get there!” She shouts, and he sees her put something on her back. “I’ll slow it down once we’re there, you just keep flying!”

“How do we get back?” Lance yells back.

Xandra pauses, looking pensively up before shrugging. “Backwards?”

With that, she jumps out of the back of the hatch, and Lance turns back to the screen only to swerve at the last second. The turns of the ship were much weaker than the Lions, and _indefinitely_ wider than Red’s, but he had adapted from Blue. He could do this.

Once he (against all odds) enters the tunnel, he scrapes the ceiling and bites his lip. Oh man, what was he thinking. He didn’t think _Keith_ could do this, much less himself. Still, he forages onwards. He doesn’t see a ‘backwards’ button anywhere on the ship, and it isn’t as though the ship speaks to him the way the Lions did.

But he isn’t completely hopeless, and he manages to get the ship all the way in, regardless of the condition of its sides. He hears the increasingly familiar whoops and cheers, one being Xandra, who pitches in with, “Sharpshooter, you’re amazing! You’re promoted!”

This does nothing to hinder Lance’s growing ego, and they blast through the last set of doors. The particle barrier protects him from the debris, but he instinctively moves his hand to block it, as though he’d hit it. When his arm lowers, he sees the crew members flying from every direction—the ceilings, the walls, hidden corridors, and the floor—onto the spacecraft. The escape plan has as much subtlety as a rhinoceros in a daycare. Lance hears them board, and then Qa’ata runs up to him. Lance barely has time to react before being yanked away from the wheel, much to his weak protests. With less than an explanation, Qa’ata straps a jetpack onto Lance’s back and runs forward, brushing past chaotic pirates making their way back onto the ship.

Before Lance can stop him, Qa’ata gives him a brief explanation. “We need to turn the ship around to get out of here, but there isn’t really a ‘backwards’ button on the ship.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Lance replies, “but what’re we going to do?”

“Manually turn the thrusters,” Qa’ata answers, as though it’s the simplest thing in the world.

They exit the ship, swinging off a bar on the side to reach the belly of the ship. Xandra leans casually against the safe section of a burning hot thruster, jetpack at the ready, evidently waiting. Once Lance and Qa’ata arrive, she positions herself so that she’s crouching under it, grabbing onto one of the ledges of metal that run across it. Qa’ata comes and imitates the position, and Lance runs to do the same when a blast of energy sears a couple of Lance’s hairs off. Startled, he gives out a small bird-like yelp before tucking and rolling to the side, and his bayard shifts into a sniper. At least he can’t miss from this range, he acknowledges, as he turns around to shoot. As he does, he finds that the guard has already dropped their own gun and hold their hands up in the air in surrender, so Lance doesn’t shoot.

Having Xandra’s cannon-like energy gun pointed at him and the Sharpshooter’s sniper rifle lying slack in his hand is enough to be intimidating, but the fiercely questioning stare from Xandra doesn’t help. The guard answers it in kind, saying, “I don’t want you guys to report us to Voltron.”

Lance lowers his gun further at the familiar name. He can’t see where the guard is looking through his mask, but they angle their helmet towards Lance’s bayard. Lance has a feeling that they know exactly where it comes from, especially from an ex-Galra soldier.

“Voltron?” Xandra spits, and Lance looks at her, concerned, at the amount of venom lacing her tongue. He instinctively wants to tell her to calm down the same way he would any other member of Voltron, but refrains.

Luckily, Qa’ata asks the unspoken question instead. “What makes you think we’re with Voltron?”

“Voltron’s the strongest fighter team in the universe, right now. We’re trying to rebuild a world from scraps and parts.” Lance’s blood freezes, but it’s not at the fact that the Galra Empire is trying to rebuild themselves.

It’s because Voltron is the strongest in the universe.

 _Without you,_ the voice in his head respectfully clarifies.

The Galra continues, despite Lance’s internal struggle. “We don’t want you reporting to Voltron. That one does not seem to pilot the Red Lion any longer,” he adds, pointing at Lance, “but if he still has an affiliation to Voltron—”

Before he can finish, the place where his left cerebral hemisphere would’ve been is replaced with a gaping hole, and Lance sees wires and sparks explode where energy from the incomplete circuit is lost. He glances at the perpetrator and sees Xandra lowering her gun. She has her hat tipped low, so Lance can’t see her exact expression, but he sees a furious glint shine in sea-green eyes. Her mouth is turned down into a frown, and she stares straight at Lance.

“You’re turning this, now.” She instructs. The former lighthearted, chaotic feel to the plan is lost completely, and Lance rushes to help. They all turn their jetpacks to the max at once, and it manages to push the thruster around its fulcrum to face the opposite direction.

When they’re finished, she doesn’t exchange a glance. Her thruster continues its momentum and she loop-de-loops around the motor and back onto the ship. Lance watches the blue of her fire disappear around the top, and he follows Qa’ata hesitantly onwards.

The ship starts moving, and it’s far slower and less graceful than they came in. The ship sustains more damage, but other than the seismic earthquakes on deck, caused by plates of metal haphazardly crushing each other with the pressure of the tight exit, everyone seems oblivious to the exchange that had occurred. They sit and throw piles of metallic coins in the air, along with shooting the new loot they’d gained—new weapons, armor, and other assorted stolen items.

Although Lance would’ve called it chaotic earlier, it’s serene to the maelstrom in Xandra’s eyes. She doesn’t take her eyes off Lance, even for a second. Through guiding other members in flight, trudging through piles of coins, and shooting stowaways, Lance is met with rage. Once the spacecraft is in the air, headed to the main ship, she walks over to Lance, gun out and pointed at his chest. Lance raises his arm instinctively and backs up as she approaches him, unfaltering. Immediately, the joy and euphoria of their escapade dissipates, and all members are silent as Lance makes his way backwards.

“Makes real sense if you put it that way, don’t it?” She shouts, and the entire ship’s volume is quelled. “Member of Voltron, all quick and eager to wag your tail at the thought of getting back to your ‘friends’, huh?” 

Lance trips as he backs off, shouts of “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” getting drowned out by the footsteps of the challenger approaching. He backs himself into a corner, and finds himself on the tip of the hull, barely staying on the platform by balancing on a ledge of metal.

Walking the plank.

Neither her gun nor her eyes leave Lance as she continues, “All your stories make sense that way! When did you plan on telling us? Maybe never? Just wanted to pull a fast one then run, so you could blow us up the same way you lions devour all your prey?”

Lance looks, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone who rushes to his defense. He scans the room, and sees glances of betrayal, disdain, sadness… but not hate. He bites his lip, knowing he can’t joke or lie his way out of this, as much as he’d like to.

Instead, he takes a short breath and doesn’t concentrate on the emptiness of space below him. He opens his eyes and confesses, “You’re right. I was a member of Voltron.”

“Was?” Someone asks.

Lance looks down. _You’ll have to come to terms with it sooner or later,_ the voice in his head encourages, and he thinks it’s the most positive thing he’s been told so far; it gives him the opportunity to accept it.

“Yeah.” Lance replies. Although Xandra’s gun is still trained on him, he doesn’t seem to recognize it’s there anymore. “But from what I’ve heard, they’ve got a full roster without me, and they’re…”

 _The strongest in the universe._ “They’re fine without me. So it’s probably best if I… stay out.” He finishes.

The crew isn’t oblivious to recognize the pain in his voice, but Xandra doesn’t seem to care one way or another. “Who was it?”

Her question snaps Lance out of his thoughts, and he turns up towards her again. Unbefitting her, he sees desperation in her eyes as she clarifies. “Unit 525, D. Con Mercenary Ships. The ship was shot by one of the Lions and deemed unsuitable for transport. Knowing two paladins were still on board, they turned on and blasted their own carrier. Who was it?”

Lance blinks, processing her question. His mind flits back to the event, aboard the ship. He remembers the box tags that he had uncovered and realizes which mission she’s talking about. The one that blasted him halfway through the galaxy, and… his throat grows hard. Then, he replies as honestly as he can, “I don’t know.”

“Don’t give me that—”

“I was in the ship! I didn’t know what was happening! Someone threw me in a pod and the explosion blew me all the way to… wherever I was. I wouldn’t know…” Lance explains.

An Arusian is the first to speak up. “Why do we care if he is or is not a member of Voltron?” They ask. “Voltron saved my home planet, and Lance just saved _all_ of us!”

There’s a hum of approval in the audience, but some of them still look tentative, as though they still believe their Captain’s words. There are others who just look frightened by the Captain and can’t choose a side either way. Still, there’s enough of a crowd questioning Xandra’s motives, asking her not to shoot. She glares back at them.

Surprisingly—or maybe unsurprisingly—Qa’ata is the one to put a hand on the barrel of her gun, pushing it down. With some reluctance, she does so. Her head doesn’t move to turn to him, but she looks him in the eyes. “It wasn’t him.” He says, solemnly.

Xandra looks at him and grits her teeth. She turns back to Lance, and with some effort, suddenly jerks the gun back down at the floor. After a beat of silence, she breathes. When her head comes back up, it lacks her desire to skewer Lance. She turns away from him, though, and looks out at the crew members around her.

“I used to think Voltron was a defender of the Universe, too,” she announces, voice loud and booming. “But in the end, all Voltron does is bring destruction. Even if it pretends it’s saving it. Voltron doesn’t give a single flying quiznack about who’s inside its head or arms or whatever, whether they want to save or destroy the universe.”

Lance is about to object as his mind flies to the Red Lion. It had taken him so long to be chosen by it, or deemed worthy, or whatever criteria the magical space lion had for him. He had thought that surely, that was a good measurement of worthiness. Alfor, Allura’s father, had been chosen for the red lion before him, too—but then he stops. After Alfor, but before him, there was Keith. He doesn’t think Keith is a bad person, by any means, but he had the shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality going. Even now, he wasn’t completely sure if the guy had grown out of that phase, but Keith piloted the Black Lion now, and that causes him to use his head even more. The Black Lion had allowed Shiro’s Evil Clone to pilot it before Keith, and even before the original Shiro, it held Zarkon. It had even chosen Zarkon over Shiro, countless times, before Shiro finally reigned control over it. Zarkon had been the head of Voltron and lived long enough to see himself become the villain. The head of Voltron didn’t seem to care.

 So he holds his tongue, unable to say anything against her.

 “Voltron might not care who flies in it,” she restates, but then turns back to Lance, hand extended to pull him back onto the safer ground of the spacecraft, “but it isn’t like everyone’s bad. Sometimes… sometimes you’re just a human boy from Earth, getting roped into something nobody prepared you for.”

Lance stares, wondering how much of that is true. It was true that he certainly liked being back on home, and even now he desperately craved his mom’s homemade cooking. But another part of him, one that’s grown on him since he started this journey, finds that he likes Hunk’s cooking. It doesn’t taste anything like his mom’s, but there’s a signature taste to it, something very Hunk-like, that takes him back to Voltron and reminds him that he’s in space. Surprisingly, it’s not the goo, or the eyes staring at him from his meal on occasion. There’s something special he loves in both, and although his end goal is still to go home and have his mom’s cooking, there’s a part of him that wants to stay out in space, adventuring.

Lance takes her hand, and she forcefully pulls him towards her in a friendly gesture, wrapping one arm around his back and using her other hand to raise her gun towards the sky. “But, Lancey Lance, you don’t deserve Earth. Earth is boring. It’s filled with a bunch of scallywags that are too scared to challenge the universe, because they think it’s gonna bite back. They’re mouthbreathers that fight amongst themselves more than they help each other, and nobody’s ever got each other’s back. Whether they look like they do or not. They’ve got twisted versions of everything—love, pain, humanity itself—and they’re idiots who stay at home and watch three guys spin a wheel for a few numbers. You’re not like that. So, where do you belong, then?”

Lance knows she’s asking rhetorically, but she walks alongside Qa’ata, and they stand in front of the entire crew. He hadn’t been paying attention before, but they all smile at him. There isn’t an explicit answer, but Xandra pulls off her red scarf and holds it out to him. “I wasn’t lying about promoting you to be my second mate.”

The scarf is a lot. It’s honor, hope, trust, and an apology wrapped all into one, and Lance looks at it before getting wrapped up in the warm mood and taking it. As he does, the entire ship cheers, and Qa’ata raises him up in the air. A grin makes its way on Lance’s face, and a bunch of aliens crowd over to give him a high-five.

Lance feels the sharp sting of a particularly strong alien’s high five and comes to realize that oh my god, it isn’t a dream. People are genuinely happy for him, and he’s the right-hand man of a pretty Space Pirate Captain (or left-hand man, as right seemed reserved for Qa’ata, but he’d settle for it either way), and he’s enjoying himself. It isn’t entirely new, but it’s different from Voltron.

If it did happen to be a dream, despite the pain from his shoulder upon the crash or the breathlessness from hearty pats in the back, Lance doesn’t feel like waking up anytime soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Letting Lance finally get the appreciation he deserves is an aesthetic, tbh. Lance is a great character who deserved more explicit appreciation fight me on this. 
> 
> Also, there are a lot of clues and foreshadowing in this chapter, both story wise and thematically (some more explicit than others). It'd be cool if anyone picked up on them!
> 
> Although this story is English, and rightfully so, there are a few bilingual tidbits some Spanish/Tagalog speakers might've picked up on, so for this chapter, there are Translation Notes.
> 
> T/N:  
> punyeta is the Tagalog equivalent of puñeta, which are both vulgar words.  
> "Primero, debes enjuagar tu cabeza! Luego, te aplica champú en el cuero cabelludo. Mantenga el champú encendido por un minuto. No se apresure. Luego, enjuague el champú por completo. Repita el proceso con el acondicionador!" - "First, you must rinse your head! Then, apply shampoo to the scalp. Keep the shampoo on for a minute. Do not hurry. Then, rinse the shampoo completely. Repeat the process with the conditioner!"


	4. the stars look very different today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is not as they seem. When things seem too good to be true, they usually are.  
> Or, this entire chapter was a cheap excuse for the "alexa this is so sad play despacito" meme.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof. long chapter! hope you find it fun. 
> 
> also, there are quite a few little easter eggs if you squint. saying it will make it obvious, but look out for paladins this chapter, and prepare to question what you know about voltron. it gets a little insightful. ft this chapter: cool lance

**Lance: Zero Gravity**

**iv. the stars look very different today**

* * *

The light from Lance’s gun fires into the dark, shooting past the building’s ultraviolet lights and bursting upon contact with ceilings, walls, and machines that look kind of important. The ship flies itself into a large door, the hull ramming itself into the opening, unable to fit the entire thing through. It’s enough to get the hatch lined up with the door, and pirates come through it in hordes, lead by Lance. The explosions are scarcely heard over the scrambling of various pirates, along with Lance’s own shouts of, “yahoo!” as he fires his gun twice at two standing sentries.

“Yahoo later, help now!” Xandra yells, though it lacks the usual bite. Instead, as impatient as she sounds, she has the faintest sense of a smile on her face. She exchanges eye contact with Qa’ata, who looks at Lance to non-verbally communicate his amusement, and they both laugh.

“My bad!” Lance replies, jumping from a balcony. At the last second, he turns on his jetpack to come to a graceful fall. As Qa’ata and Xandra rush past, along with a few other crew members, he looks behind and shoots backwards as he follows them, nailing quite a few guards with the paralyze function on a borrowed gun.

For Lance’s moral conscience, at least, this place looks like the epitome of evil. It’s significantly harder to navigate through than most other places because of how dark it is, and there are various hallways. Some lead to weapons—pretty serious weapons, for that matter, not just pea shooters. There are a ton of old Galra weapons and high-tech weaponry, as well as different swords, daggers, and knives that are disarmed by an army of pirates. Lance is concerned when he sees one of their men can take down ten of their own, but Lance has always known that Galra were strong fighters. Somehow, the entire thing seems oddly familiar, with black light lining their outfits. They have the purplish black light and everything’s, well, dark and black. The building’s colour scheme shows off how evil they are, but Lance notices that the Galra Empire’s signature red is missing. It’s a little weird, but the shouts of crew members stop him from thinking too much about it.

They run on, trashing and grabbing as much stuff from the rooms they pass by. Lance can’t even begin to count the amount of loot this would stockpile for them—it’d be their biggest hit yet. Xandra knocks down a guard with blunt force, opening the door for Lance and Qa’ata to go through. She winks back at them, pointing her gun at the hallway behind them.

“You two go in. I’ve got your back,” she guarantees. To prove her point, she shoots a Galra rounding the corner square in the chest, and he falls back. Smoke curls around the barrel of her gun, and she blows it.

Lance briefly thinks about how badass that looks and is almost disappointed that his gun is to efficient to produce smoke after shots. He considers using glitter, but he suddenly catches sight of two more guards in the room who stand in battle position, and Lance notices too late. As he turns, they charge both him and Qa’ata, daggers in hand.

Lance’s quick-thinking kicks in. He fumbles with his assault rifle, caught off guard because _wow,_ they’re fast, and by the time he has proper hold over his gun, he loses the ranged weapon advantage. Lance knows that although it should be a two-on-two, everyone is trusting Qa’ata to unlock the barracks so that the crew can get to the escape ships. Without thinking, he shouts at Qa’ata, “Go on!”

Qa’ata looks at him, uncertain, but nods anyways and continues. One of the Galra quickly backflip off the walls, changing direction to intercept Qa’ata instead, and Lance thinks about how cool the parkour looks before lunging with his bayard. A red light shimmers around his rifle as it turns into a sword, and it counters the Galra’s blade as Qa’ata runs by. The Galra moves back, standing by the other, and they briefly look so fierce and serious that Lance begins to reconsider.

Can he even take them? He held his Altean Broadsword in the stance that Allura taught him, sizing up his enemies.

 _Probably not, tbh._ The voice says, and Lance has a feeling that it has a point this time.

Unlike what he expected, he sees one of the Galra narrow their eyes. “Where did you get that bayard?”

“Like I’d tell you,” Lance says, unwilling to give information to possible informants. He didn’t want to cause the D. Con any trouble, and he was a hundred and ten percent done with fighting the Galra Empire ships.

The Galra on the other side of Lance adds, “That bayard belongs to the Red Lion of Voltron.”

“Old news!” Lance petulantly shouts back, and both Galra charge him suddenly. Instead of shrieking, his little talking intermission helps to steel his nerves, and he can glean the basic information. He first parries the blade on the left, and then ducks to dodge the other on the right.

Unfortunately, things go wrong very quickly.

While he’s dodging, the Galra uses more perception than their arms and uses the bent-over opportunity to knee Lance in the stomach. Lance gets the breath knocked out of him as he stumbles backwards from the force of the blow, and barely has time to block one of the blades before the other skirts by his head. He uses the opportunity to duck and knock one of them off their feet, but they just as easily grab Lance’s legs to prevent him from moving as the other strikes downwards with their own blade. Lance thinks about stabbing the guard holding his foot, but it would’ve undoubtedly been fatal—and even then, he couldn’t be sure he could escape the blade coming. So Lance improvises.

Lance pulls off his jetpack, one of the better ones on the ship, and attaches it to the Galra holding his legs, upside down, on full blast. He feels a bit of the heat from the jetpack hit his face, but the Galra holding him is quickly blasted backwards, dragging Lance along. The other Galra, who had been striking down, lets out a disappointed click of their tongue when their knife scrapes the metal where Lance’s head had been.

The Galra with Lance takes the jetpack off once they’ve hit the other wall but burns his hand while doing so. Lance uses the opportunity to kick the other hand away, and he moves away from them both. He thinks he’s gotten some good distance when he feels his back hit two corners. He swears, being literally cornered.

He looks as the two Galra come towards him, and he knows he can’t win in hand-to-hand. Probably not against one of them, and definitely not against both. _And,_ to add to his despair, he’s fresh out of jetpacks now. Despite his fear, he taunts, “Come on, is that all you’ve got?!”

When they come at him, a lot of things happen.

First, he resigns to his fate. He concedes, agreeing with the voice in his head that it’s over. But then, a better idea implants itself in Lance, and he thinks he might as well fight his way down. With that sudden hit of resolve, he tries to evaluate the situation again. He doesn’t see an out, because it isn’t like he can attack two people at once, but then his hands feel a lot lighter.

He closes his eyes, and the weight returns. When he pulls his weapons up, he already knows what it is. Two pistols point at the Galra, and the soldiers hesitate. Lance uses the opportunity to shoot them squarely in the chest, and they’re blasted backwards before falling.

In a moment of awe, he looks down at his bayard’s new form. They’re much shorter in range than his other weapons but have a lot more utility to them. They’re a little weird in his hands, he admits. Despite the feeling, he grins and briefly thinks, _take that, Keith!_

While he grins at himself over how cool his new weapons are, his moment is interrupted by the explosion outside. He runs to the window but thinks against opening immediately when he sees the fog that fills the vicinity. There’s a black mark on the floor where Lance assumes the bomb had exploded, as nobody lies around it. Beside them are various troops, passed out on the floor. Lance’s stomach sinks, and he doubts he can fight out of this one.

As he looks out, he feels a hand on his shoulder. He nearly jumps out of his skin, turning his new weapon on the person that had appeared, but sees Qa’ata. Qa’ata looks nervously out the door, not bothering to acknowledge Lance’s surprise, and passes him a gas mask. Lance looks at it for a few seconds, and Qa’ata explains, “That’s definitely Kilgorenic Gas. It’s acidic in high density, but this much should just be able to knock them out. The ones closest to the blast, though…” Qa’ata bites his lip, looking down. “I… can’t tell if they’re okay.”

Lance sees Qa’ata’s concern and puts a hand on his shoulder in return. Qa’ata looks back at Lance’s light reassuring smile.

“They’ll be fine,” Lance says. “We’ll get out of here. We just need…” Lance looks out to the others, and frowns. There’s no way he and Qa’ata alone would be able to get every unconscious member out safely, so he thinks. “Is… there any way to tell the others to grab these guys and go?”

Qa’ata looks apprehensive. “It’s not like we bring communicators,” he says, obviously.

Lance scans the outside again, and his eyes fall on the speakers. He turns towards Qa’ata excitedly. “What if—what if you steal those speakers out there? Could you hack those?”

“I… don’t know. Their security is… ridiculously good, which is why it took me so long, but… I could try.” He replies. Before he can receive approval from Lance, he opens his holopad back up and starts typing away. Lance looks out at the dense purple fog and puts on his mask. It only covers his mouth and nose, but he supposes that’s enough.

He takes a breath, as though he needs to hold it, and then bursts through the door quickly, closing it behind him. It’s as quiet as a pindrop, but Lance hears an occasional cough from one of the fallen crew members. His guns are out, but once he realizes there are no Galra where he is (not yet, at least), he runs out into the other hallways. A lot of them are similar, but then he hears another room with the familiar hollers still active. He runs towards it, all the while hearing Qa’ata’s voice.

“Everyone, put your gas masks on! The Galra are using smoke bombs!” Qa’ata shouts, “Please, once you’re safely secured, head over to room 2B to collect fallen shipmates, and get them on the ships!”

Lance runs into the room a few minutes later to see everyone wearing gas masks, but still beating up the Galra. It’s impossible to get a hold of the room, as he’s unable to make commands over their screaming. He counts five Galra and makes his way up to a higher platform. Weakly, he calls out a “hey!” to no avail. Nobody seems to notice, and the crew continues combat. Lance’s stomach twists, because they _need_ to get out before the Galra recollect themselves. It might be the biggest hit they’ve ever had, but the people they’re looting are also more experienced than they’ve ever encountered. If they didn’t have countermeasures for space pirates, Lance would be disbelieving.

Lance bites his bottom lip, unsure of what to do. Even from such a high place, he didn’t seem to attract attention. In fact, he thinks he attracted less attention than being down with the crew, but at least up on the platform, he couldn’t get involved in the mess. The ring of people below him are whooping and slashing as they see, missing the more graceful Galra by a landslide. Though it does seem, Lance admits, like they’re winning through quantity, not quality.

He looks above him, though, and sees light strips line the ceiling. When he looks down, there are smaller lamp lights. It’s not much of an idea, but it’s the only one Lance has.

The crew are finishing off the Galra when each Galra suddenly suffers a hit. If they stayed in one place for a while, they would suddenly be knocked back by a flash of light, and the crew that focused on them turned to the source. As they did, the lights suddenly broke, one by one—all the black lamp lights, and then two of the light strips. A single light is left, shining above Lance. He basks in the spotlight for a second, but then puts on a more serious expression.

“What are you guys _doing?_ Your crew needs you! They’re gassed asleep out there,” Lance says, gesticulating wildly to the doors, “and you’re here fighting Galra you could’ve easily beaten!”

“That ain’t how we work!” An alien lashes back, “If they got hurt, that’s on them! We ain’t Voltron—it’s every man for themselves!”

Lance looks confounded for a second, because he thought there had been a sense of family. Still, he makes a point and shouts, “If you guys don’t help them, _none_ of us get out!” Lance grabs onto one of the lamps and shoots the wire it’s connected to so that it falls, putting him back on ground level. “Nobody leads like our Captain does, and like it or not, we need her. Just like how we need everyone else out there. We can’t just cut our crew in half with every new place we go to!”

“But Lance,” he hears an Arusian say, “ _you_ could lead us.”

Despite his serious demeanor, this knocks him out of it for a second. Like a cold, wet slap to the face, Lance gives a dumbfounded look. The thought hadn’t occurred to him before, and he still certainly didn’t _think_ he could lead the Space Pirates. Nobody could, not like Xandra. Even just reigning them in for a second had been an issue, while Xandra could have done it with a jut of her hip and a quirk of her lip.

He snaps out of it quickly enough. “No, I can’t. Your _friends_ need you, and if we can’t show these Galra that we leave no man behind, then we’re no better than them!”

There’s a moment of silence before an alien shouts the usual “Aye!” and they begin filing out of the room. Lance hears calls like, “I’m coming, Jikcapi!” for a fellow crewmate, or “squanch the Galra Empire—no offense, Qixar!”

He runs into the room after them and sees that most of the members have already been picked up. He’s about to turn tail to the room with warships before seeing Qa’ata turn other members away, towards the ship. Lance bumps into others as he tries to make his way to them, but eventually nears Qa’ata. He’s never seen Qa’ata this distressed, but he quickly gathers the situation and his anxiety increases—Xandra’s legs are visible, but Qa’ata’s lanky body covers her face. He’s cradling her, Lance notices, and his throat goes cold. With Qa’ata this distressed, unwilling to let anyone see her…

“She’s fine. Lance, go onto the ship. We’ll be there soon.” Qa’ata explains, but his voice is shaky.

Lance bends over, putting a hand on Qa’ata’s shoulder. “I’m not leaving without you two.”

It isn’t entirely selfless, though Lance is sure he would’ve said the same whether the consequences were there or not. If he leaves without them, it makes Lance the captain of the pirates, and it’s a responsibility he isn’t sure he can handle.

But when Lance looks at Xandra, he’s suddenly silent.

She definitely appears injured, there’s no doubt about it. She lies unconscious, and her arms show signs of cuts and burns from the shrapnel and the gas. He guesses she’d been closer to the blast than he would’ve liked, but that isn’t what gets him.

What leaves him speechless is the way the burns have changed her face’s colour. Not because of burns or acids, but because the usual indigo of her face had withered into a light tan, and the blue of her lips had faded in the corners, smearing onto her face, revealing a light pink layer underneath.

From what Lance could tell from his many female family members, it’s makeup.

On a human.

He looks at Qa’ata for answers but sees the distressed look in his eye and stops. His eyes float to Xandra for an extra second, but then he puts a hand on Qa’ata’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We need to get out of here, okay?”

Qa’ata closes his eye, and nods. His expression solidifies for a second, and he picks Xandra up. Both he and Lance make their way towards the ships, and it’s one of the last ones left. Lance ushers the other two in before entering himself, shutting the door behind him. The ship definitely isn’t made for three people, but it shouldn’t affect its ability of flight. He takes the controls in his hands as Qa’ata adjusts Xandra so that she’s on his back and uses the other hand to hold onto a bar to stabilize himself. Lance can see other Galra fighters, in oddly familiar masks this time, board ships. Before he can fully register their masks’ appearances, they’re in the air, zipping through space as fast as Lance can pilot.

As he’s leaving, he sees a bunch of other Galra ships leave from another exit, and they chase after the crew. Lance bites his lip, knowing some of them aren’t even capable of piloting properly. They’d get shut down for sure, and Lance worried. He glances at Xandra, wondering what she would do.

He can’t think of it. He’s not Xandra.

He looks at the screen and closes his eyes tightly. He knows he’s about to make a decision he will very, very much regret.

He sets up a video camera to the other ships and gives the goofiest face he can make. He pulls one of his eyelids downwards, sticking out his tongue and jutting his jaw out while compressing his neck to give himself at least three chins. Then, directly into the camera, he childishly sings, “Na na na boo boo! You can’t catch me!” and abruptly shuts the transmission.

It’s kiddy, but it isn’t like anyone liked Lance for his adult-like features.

It gives him the desired effect as the ships turn on him, and Qa’ata hisses, “What are you _doing?_ ”

Lance doesn’t answer, but he hears the other Galra fighters in their own respective ships talk amongst themselves. “It’s coming from ship 20742.”—“The leader is on that ship.”—“They have the Red Lion’s bayard, as well.”

But then one voice comes across, something amazingly familiar, but leaving room for uncertainty with the bad quality of the radio.

“ _Lance?”_

Lance’s blood runs cold. It’s amazing what one word can accomplish. The voice has too many emotions and it leaves him confused. There’s confusion, hurt, surprise, relief… Lance wants to reply, and his hand even hovers over the Talk button again. The following exchange stops him.

“I have position over the target. I am shooting.” One voice says.

“No, don’t shoot!” The same voice that recognized Lance replies, frustrated and desperate.

“Firing.”

“I said, _don’t shoot!”_

Before Lance is exactly sure what happens, he sees one of their Galra ships speed up in his direction, flying with speed and grace that Lance couldn’t even hope to imitate. A better flier than the rest, by far, and Lance speeds up to try and outrun it until it suddenly turns on its own fleets, and the missile that had been aimed at Lance’s ship explodes right in front of theirs. Lance isn’t sure what happens for the rest of the exchange, nor the condition of the ship afterwards, because it takes a few seconds before he’s out of range from their ships.

Lance looks at the distant scarlet of the explosion from the video feed behind the spacecraft, eyebrows furrowed half in confusion and half in concern. His mind first jumps to the obvious questions. Who was that Galra? Why had he known Lance? How could he have sounded so desperate? Why did it sound so _familiar,_ and yet if the transmission had been even a little clearer…?

He dismisses it in his head. They must have just recognized his bayard and didn’t want to shoot down someone with a connection to the Red Lion. Or, since they knew him, someone who had piloted the red and blue lion... but then, that could affiliate that Galra with Voltron. They wanted to save Voltron. There are a lot of loopholes in his conclusion, but with the headache it gives him, he doesn’t bother to think too much about it. He redirects his attention to the shiphold, where they plan to pile their stolen ships. He feels Qa’ata behind him and remembers the other issue making his stomach churn, and glances at the very human-looking Xandra. Qa’ata meets his gaze with guilt, and then averts it.

“I’ll explain everything once we’re on board. Just talk to the crew, then meet us in the Captain’s quarters.” Qa’ata replies.

Lance hesitates, focusing back to the ship. “Okay.”

The descent into the ship is smooth, and Lance looks back at Qa’ata and Xandra, nervously. Qa’ata gives a reassuring nod, and Lance exits their ship. He makes it back to the deck, standing on the balcony on the foremast. Everyone’s eyes focus on him, and despite his jitters, he grins and puts his hands out in a welcoming gesture. Once the crew catches sight of him and start cheering, he blows kisses. He gives cute little oh-stop-it-you hand waves, feigning modesty. Then, he grabs onto one of the ropes that runs from the balcony down to the deck, where he’s met with a big welcome. They’re still fooling around with their loot from earlier, but they also give a bit of attention to Lance.

“You saved my life!” One of them says, and Lance gives a genuinely sheepish smile, catching him off guard. The ship goes through the usual hype after a pillaging, and nobody seems to be too concerned about anything—though Lance supposes that could be due to the crowd around the nearest parlor, too.

Lance makes his way past everyone, trying not to engage in a conversation for too long with any of them, even though they try to stop him to commend him. He loves the glory, but it’s a little overwhelming, especially with everything that had just happened, so he smiles, waves, and makes it into the Captain’s Quarters.

The minute he steps inside, Lance recognizes just how Earthly it felt, and he’s surprised he didn’t notice before. Granted, before, he was never able to look inside the Captain’s Quarters—only Qa’ata was, but his senses bring him back to quieter times. Wafting through the air is a warm smell, like fresh bread mixed with a few lingering cigarettes, and the sound of Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle playing throughout the room. Lance sees a guitar at Xandra’s bedside, but it seems unused—the childish space stickers on its body seem worn and peeling, and it’s covered with a small layer of dust. The actual music comes from a small speaker system hooked up to a portable device. The room itself is fairly messy, with clothes draped over the balcony, on the floor, and hanging from mirrors. Even while walking over to Qa’ata and Xandra, Lance has to carefully avoid tubes of lipstick and other pencils like little Legos littering the floor.  The shelves are adorned with little Earth gimmicks: decks of cards, notebooks and books, tape, yarn and sewing needles, and Lance almost laughs when he catches sight of a Furby on one of the walls, looking eager but untouched.

When he walks beside Qa’ata, he notices the distinctly human-like nature on Xandra’s serene face—her hair is still white, as it had been, but the dark roots show themselves more distinctly up close, in the warm lighting of the room. Her face is sickly pale, but it no longer has its bluish tinge. Her lips are a light peach, _not_ indigo, and her ears are round like Lance’s, though he can still see residue from the silicon.

Qa’ata doesn’t turn to look at Lance, but addresses him clearly. “Her name is Alexandra Cruz.” After a short pause, he continues, “I am sorry, sincerely, for hiding this.”

Lance looks at him, and then back at Xandra—no, Alexandra. “I mean… it’s fine. She probably told you not to, and… maybe she was worried, or something. It’s okay, it’s just… a little new to me.” Lance says, taking a seat next to Qa’ata. “How did she get here, anyways?”

He eyes Lance through the eyepatch. “I… There are still a lot of mysteries to Xandra that even I don’t know,” he admits. “From what I know, she was abducted by aliens a few years before Voltron returned to the universe. They were Space Pirates, but she and her brother, Leonardo Cruz, somehow overcame the whole ordeal, and they were left in charge of the ship since then. Her brother left to go on his own journey, and…” He stops talking. He glances at Lance’s bayard. “And… he died with the explosion. She thinks it’s Voltron’s fault… or at least, one of the Lions.”

 _Unit 525, D. Con Mercenary Ships. The ship was shot by one of the Lions and deemed unsuitable for transport. Knowing two paladins were still on board, they turned on and blasted their own carrier._ Lance remembers Xandra’s anger, the poison on her tongue.

Then, he remembers something else, and finds himself unconsciously biting his lip. He isn’t sure if it’s guilt, or just him being sad, but he remembers the one alien—no, with Xandra’s makeup skills, he couldn’t confirm that anymore—who had helped him escape. Survive.

_I’m too late._

Not everyone aboard that ship had been a Galra sympathizer. Some of them just didn’t know what was going on. He wonders if Xandra’s words had some validity to them, after all: maybe Voltron _was_ only good at destroying things. He didn’t really like to think about it.

Instead, he turns down Jim Croce’s timeless piece and grabs the guitar, taking a seat beside Qa’ata. He cringes at the slightly out-of-tune B-string, but has no way to fix it, so he tunes it until it sounds about right. From there, he begins Nocturne In E Major—something his muscle memory could still pull off. His plucking is off from a couple years of inactivity, and he cringes at each mistake, but it retains the smoothness and calm that he’s always had. Something that still seems undeniably Lance-like but contrasts his usual boisterous nature. A softer side, one that he’d play when one of his nieces or nephews were sick, or when his family would embarrassingly ask him to play for them at family gatherings.

Eventually, Xandra’s expression eases into unknit eyebrows and calm breaths, and Qa’ata remains silent beside Lance. He is surprised at first, meeting Lance with wide eyes upon the first strum, but later closing them and smiling. “You know how to play.”

“Uh, I’m like the Jimi Hendrix of Spanish Acoustic,” Lance explains, very modestly, until he hits a bad note. It takes him a couple tries for him to remember the note, and then he goes back a couple bars to regain the lost flow of the song, but then casually continues. “So I might’ve forgotten a _little_. But cut me some slack, we didn’t have guitars in the castle.”

“That’s a shame,” Qa’ata mentions, “you seem very good at it.”

Lance shrugs with his eyebrows. “I’d play for any of the paladins if I could,” he explains. “I used to play for my family, so… I guess they kind of fit the bill out here in space.”

“It sounds like you miss them. Both your family and the paladins, still.”

Lance pauses, eyes glancing at nothing in particular with an uncharacteristic seriousness to them. “Yeah,” he admits, “I do.”

Eventually, Xandra opens her eyes. Instead of their usual green, they show a warm amber as she glances at Lance through a haze. She assesses the situation before closing her eyes again, a small smile on her face, weary and fatigued but still conscious.

Lance’s own smile begins to climb onto his face, though his is of the more shit-eating variety. “So, Alexandra, huh?”

The smile melts off Xandra’s face. It still doesn’t have any malice but gives off an endeared kind of annoyed look. She gives a friendly glare at Qa’ata, who shrugs. Resigned to defeat, she doesn’t muster up the energy to look too offended, and instead pulls the quilt over her head, groaning.

“I’m going to get water for you,” Qa’ata says, leaving the two alone.

There’s a weird silence that sits in a paradox between awkward and comfortable until Lance speaks again. “Why didn’t you tell me? Plus, you’re _Spanish._ That means—that means when I was fighting those Galra a while back, you knew exactly what I was saying—”

“ _Filipino_.” Xandra groans. “I know _Tagalog,_ but yes, I knew what you were saying, since I know one of the Filipino Spanish dialects.”

Lance blinks, laughing. She comes out from under the covers and begins laughing along with him, and he teases, “Who’s a lame little earthling now?”

“Oh, shut up,” Xandra replies, “if you were any smarter, you would’ve known a long time ago. Seriously, what alien in space knows _Captain Underpants?_ ”

“How am I supposed to know if aliens know Captain Underpants? Scientists send weird space junk out all the time.” Lance refuted.

“Space junks refer to random crafts that are shot out, not random kids books!”

“Does it?”

“Yes!”

They both share a bit of a laugh at that, and the silence settles back in. Xandra takes a deep breath before sitting up, and Lance gently and quickly places the guitar to the side as he goes to try and help her. She puts her hand up to signify she’s alright and makes her way over to the dresser and opens a few drawers before pulling out a blue powder.

“You… probably shouldn’t be moving,” Lance reminds her.

“Times are tough, I’m tougher. I’ll be fine,” she explains. She grimaces at the initial pain but gets used to it as she reapplies her makeup in the mirror. He watches her as she does so, and Qa’ata comes back in. He walks next to her, placing the cup down, and she places a short kiss on his cheek. “How’d the mission go?”

“Huge success, thanks to Lance,” Qa’ata explains, nodding at Lance respectively.

The unadulterated honesty embarrasses Lance a little, but he still puffs up his chest and waves his hand down. “Oh, please, don’t thank me. All in a day’s work, of course,” he says, intentionally making it unclear if he’s trying to be modest or feign modesty—it’s probably a bit of both, but even Lance can’t decide anymore.

“No, seriously,” Xandra replies, parting from the mirror, putting a hand on Lance’s shoulder as she walks past him, “I owe you one.”

“What? No, no, it’s really nothing. It was just the right thing to do—”

Lance is interrupted when he feels something pressed against his chest, and looks down to see Xandra’s hand, closed, holding a device in her fist. He reaches up to grab it, and she drops it in his hands. He observes it a little more carefully, turning it in his hands. On it is a long list of songs, and while the settings are in some alien language, all the song names are legible for an earthling. It shines a blue light on his face, and as he clicks one of the songs, it begins to play through its internal speakers.

Xandra smiles at him. “A gift.”

Lance’s eyes immediately light up, and he invades Xandra’s space as he grills her with a barrage of questions. “Really? Does it have Beyoncé? The Backstreet Boys? Luis Fonsi? Oh-oh-oh—what about older things, like the Pina Colada song or Thriller?!”

She laughs at his misplaced enthusiasm. “It should have just about everything. I’ve never had any trouble finding a song, but I think it caps off at around… 2020? Songs after are pretty hazy.”

Lance scrolls through the song list as Xandra explains, “You can basically play anything. No batteries, it can hijack most speaker systems within a five-hundred-meter radius, and if you look hard enough, I think you can find some alien songs. The system’s in Altean, though, so there’s not much else you can do with it without risking blowing something up.”

Lance looks through the list, throwing on a couple songs, and playing each for a few seconds before moving onto the next. His impatience and curiosity make him come across like a kid unwrapping a Christmas present, and Lance all but shrieks when some of his favourite songs play. He shouts the lyrics, and both Xandra and Qa’ata exchange humoured glances. Xandra walks away from her dresser, slipping David Bowie’s Platinum Album Collection in one hand while the other ushers Lance out. All three of them walk out of Quarters while Lance continues to scroll through, and he’s only interrupted by the hollering of the crew when he steps outside. He’s snapped out of his fantasies of Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson when they start calling his name.

 “So, would you still go back to Voltron now?” Qa’ata asks, smiling.

It has a sobering effect on Lance, unbeknownst to everyone—or maybe not everyone. Qa’ata immediately learns that he’s stepped on something by the way Lance’s smile no longer meets his eyes, and instead gives off an unreadable, blank look of surprise. A lot of emotions pass his face in the span of a few seconds and run from conflicted to resignation to fondness to… longing. “Probably,” he admits.

The crew quiets. Not to a complete silence, but enough for Lance to notice he’s said something wrong. Before he can defend himself, he looks at the crowd with an exasperated whine, seeking sympathy, “Oh, come _on,_ it’s not personal or anything—” but then stops. The crew isn’t looking at him, their eyes are trained nervously on the person next to him.

He turns to see Xandra’s lips pressed in a thin smile, though it feels far more superficial than just a few moments ago. Her green eyes kick up a storm, and it mirrors the stare she wore when she had found out he was a member of Voltron. “Sorry, what?”

“It’s not that I don’t like you guys—if I could, it’d be nice if we could work together! You know, like the Blade of Marmora, and it’d be pretty cool if they saw me as a space pirate and a paladin at the same time! That way we could still help the universe, and—”

Xandra, evidently not seeking a real explanation, interrupts him. “Let me get this straight,” she recounts, “you—genius sharpshooter, coordinator, ally and apparently, mild idiot—want to go back to a place where people help to gun down an entire race, where people don’t appreciate you, you’re looked down upon, and they mark you off from one personality trait? Instead of here, where everyone wants you, as a leader or friend or whatever the hell you want?”

“It’s not like that,” Lance defends, because it’s not. The others might’ve made fun of him from time to time, sure, but they didn’t undermine him to the extent where he felt completely unappreciated. Keith let him go on the mission because he knew Lance was competent enough. And it wasn’t like he was all that, either—the pirates would’ve thrown just as big of a party whether Lance prove he could eat a Zargnut or if he conquered seven galaxies.

“It’s not, but it is?” Xandra asks, speaking up. She approaches him again, her voice a crescendo in anger contrasting the growing silence. “They don’t like you or want you. If they did, then they would’ve looked. Someone would’ve looked. It isn’t exactly like we’ve been the most secretive,” she mentions, jabbing at his bayard with pinpointed pressure. “You don’t seem to understand—they don’t care about you. And Voltron sure as hell doesn’t. Have you ever thought about it? It hired, what, a bunch of human children to lead a war machine? That’s what it is, effectively, you know.”

“I chose to do it, Xandra. We all did. We just wanted to help—”

“ _Did you?_ ” She asks, seething. “It’s worse than you just running a war machine. You guys were conscripted to fight in a war you knew _nothing_ about. One of the members you talked about was twelve at the time. It’s not a choice, either. Not really. You’re ripped away from your families and told to save the universe or doom it. I don’t see the choice there. It’s a children’s crusade, not a cute arcade shoot-em-up like Space Invaders. Here, we gave you that _choice,_ at least, to fight alongside us during every mission, and you’d be nothing without us. Why can’t you just _stay_ —”

Lance reaches a sympathetic hand out. “Listen, I—”

She slaps his hand away from her shoulder, and the look in her eye is downright feral, but not just because of how aggressive it is. It’s the look of a caged animal, fighting with its last breath. “Listen, _nothing,_ Leo! If we matter to you, then why do you want to leave so much?!”

The room stills at that moment. Even Qa’ata, who had been trying to alleviate the tension in the room, takes a step back. Xandra recognizes her mistake like a red slap to the face but doesn’t look around the room. Lance watches as Xandra closes her mouth, retracting her bared teeth. “I mean…”

Lance stares, along with everyone else. Nobody seems to recognize the name except for Qa’ata, who visibly stiffens where everyone’s eyebrows raise in concern. Xandra closes her eyes with a pained look, and he sees her expression steel as it returns to something neutral. Something hidden, like the surface level of an ocean that stretches deeper than a planet of water. She tilts her head abruptly, mien of confidence reappearing, and she even manages to pull her trademark smirk, but the anger hasn’t seeped away completely. “I mean, you’re part of the family now. Voltron doesn’t want or need to find you, so I figure a good pirate pseudonym for you’d be somethin’ like Leo. You don’t even fight with a lance, anyways,” she mentions, and the crew breaks into hushed laughter, unsure of whether to giggle or crap their pants at the sudden mood shift. Lance can read through it, though: it’s a cover-up, and a pretty weak one, even for Lance’s standards. With flair, she turns towards the crew. “A Leo is a creature with strength, bravery, and courage on my home planet. I think all you can agree that the person beside us is not just a weapon, but with awful hair like that, he’s a lion, and with mistakes like his, he is but a human. Something like Leandro can only be fitting, right? Our lion-human, Lance.”

The crew howls in approval and begin to chant the name. It isn’t even that Lance dislikes it. He likes the sentiment behind it, and he’d normally like the idea of having a cool pirate pseudonym, but he doesn’t smile at the glory the crew gives this time. In fact, he almost tunes it out, looking over at Xandra’s unreadable, steely expression. Before Lance can ask her about anything, the ship shakes. Xandra doesn’t even bother acknowledging Lance, walking past him with her shoulders held high, mode switching instantly from casual to battle. Or maybe she was in battle mode ever since Voltron was brought up again, it wasn’t clear.

Either way, a guy in the crowd suddenly reports, “It’s the guys from the base!”

Xandra looks through the observatory windows above them and sees a legion of enemy ships looming over their base. The first attack hits the ship dead-on, but bounces and spreads across the particle barrier. Xandra doesn’t swear or look excited. She simply turns towards Lance and Qa’ata. “We’re going to ward them off. You two need to find how they tracked us.” She throws the forgotten David Bowie disc that she’d been holding at Qa’ata, who catches it. Xandra doesn’t meet Qa’ata’s serious gaze, instead jumping up onto a hanging rope and swinging down from it, firing a few shots from her cannon for good measure.

Qa’ata starts running, taking a side door away from the commotion, and Lance runs after him. In Qa’ata’s hands are already the familiar blue portable device, and it beeps louder and faster with each step they take in their direction.

In no time at all, he and Qa’ata stand outside a door that seems more wall than door—there isn’t a distinct frame, and if Lance was told that it was just a painting, he probably would’ve believed them. It’s metal, but camouflages so well into the wall that Lance has to trace his fingers along the cracks of the door to make the outline.

“What’s inside?” Lance asks.

“The junkyard. Or… I guess you could call it the treasurehold.” Qa’ata replies, opening the David Bowie CD. Inside, behind the CD is a small key card, not larger than a driver’s licence on earth, rectangular with a small chip off one of the corners. When he places the card on the door, it traces a cracked, branching pattern across it, eventually lighting up the entire door with red lines. When it opens, Lance’s jaw goes slack.

Any sort of currency he’s ever seen is somewhere in the room, whether it’s lying in the ground en masse in piles and piles or mixed amongst different types. Units, coins, bills, anything. There are crowns, jewelry, pots, pans, shiny gold-plated valuables stacked in the room. Along with those, there are weapons—ships, scrapped for parts, along with fully functional ones. Lance can’t even imagine the amount of _booty_ in the room, as he imagines it takes up the entire hull of the ship and he’s not even sure how that’s possible but there they were.

Qa’ata hears a crashing behind him and passes the device to Lance, pulling a sword off of the ground. “Go. I’ll hold them off.” Qa’ata orders.

“Shouldn’t I be the one holding them off while you look for it?” Lance counters.

“I have to jump to hyperspeed the second you destroy it! Now go!” Qa’ata replies, pushing Lance into the room. Lance stumbles backwards, into the room, and sees Qa’ata run down the hall to intercept the men.

Lance takes the time to look around at everything, and is dumbfounded. The amount of money in the treasurehold stacks itself to the ceilings, and Lance can’t see beyond most piles. He sees little things, too—thrones made of gold, blast marks made from energy guns, and the wreckage of different ships. He could buy three castles with the money there, and he wonders what they do with all of it. They’ve never been short on money during any of their pit stops, but they were just… hoarding all of it.

The beeping gets louder, and Lance looks down at it to see yet another huge pile.

Like looking for a needle in a haystack. Great.

He gets to work quickly and climbs the pile of coins until the beeping reaches its loudest point. Then he follows the beeping noises over the dainty clinking and clanging of coins as they slide past one another. It’s one of the biggest piles in the room, and apparently, the tracker is situated deep inside it. Over his grumbling and the coins, the only thing echoing in the room are the periodic noises given by the device.

After a bit of time, Lance grabs the tracker—it’s small, black and purple, like the Galra base they’d been in earlier. There’s an odd symbol on it, too, but before Lance can put his finger on where he’s seen it before, he feels the ship rumble once again. He shoots it, and it burns a hole through the tracker. That’s when things get weird, because Lance sees a red light peeking through it, and whatever was behind it was able to easily deflect Lance’s bayard.

When Lance shifts the coins out of curiosity, his stomach sinks.

It isn’t that he can see what’s inside the pile, but there are a few things he can make out. The red light is the outlines of a particle barrier. Then, while he looks at it, he sees yellow and blue lights illuminating other areas under the coins.

He reaches out to touch it, the way something in his head urges him to.

To _reclaim—_

He hears Qa’ata slam against the door, and Lance jerks his head to the side. The quick motion shifts him to an odd enough angle that before he knows it, he’s sliding down the pile, shouting, trying to hold onto his bayard as to not lose it in the treasury.

When he hits the bottom, he takes a second to recollect himself before he sees a masked Galra soldier run towards where Qa’ata had went down in a blur of purple and black. Without much forethought, Lance shoots the guy’s side, and he falls paralyzed on the ground beside Qa’ata. Lance runs over to his fellow crew member and extends a hand towards him, pulling him up.

“I shot the tracker,” Lance reports.

Qa’ata nods, taking Lance’s hand and getting up abruptly. They don’t need to exchange words as Qa’ata rips the key card out of the wall, runs to the end of the hall, and opens a panel. There, he pulls a few wires, and shouts at Lance, “Hold onto something!”

Lance grabs onto the handlebar of a door seconds before jumping to hyperspeed. It’s not exactly painful, but it reminds Lance of rollercoasters on Earth. Except this rollercoaster goes a thousand light-years per hour and nearly rips his arm off in the process. And he doesn’t even feel the actual inertia of the blast, because he’s protected by the ship.

During the trip, though, Lance has another revelation. He looks down, and nearly lets go of the handlebar from shock.

The Galra soldier that had attacked Qa’ata was very visible, pressed up against the wall at the other end of the ship. While he had just passed Lance like a blur earlier, he now had a very clear look at the masks they wore.

They weren’t working for the Galra Empire.

That was a Blade of Marmora mask.

Once they drop out of hyperspeed, Qa’ata looks over at Lance with a sympathetic, “Are you okay?”

Lance’s blood rushes to his ears, and part of him tunes Qa’ata out. How many Galra bases had they destroyed that weren’t trying to rebuild the Galra Empire, but instead were trying to do their best to support the galaxy? It wasn’t every one—there’s no way—but how many had been good guys, and how many had been bad guys? And then, inside the treasurehold there was that thing that spoke to Lance in the way only one thing in the entire universe did, and he wasn’t about to overlook anything, and if Xandra had lied about being human and the Blade of Marmora—but she didn’t technically lie, she just didn’t tell him—but it doesn’t _change anything,_ who was she, what was…

“I need to talk to the Captain,” Lance says, and walks past Qa’ata. His expression is as determined as he is on missions, Qa’ata notices, and he doesn’t intercept him.

As Lance comes out, he sees the slew of people that come his way. He’s snapped out of his brooding thoughts, but still feels disconnected from the crowd as he edges their way past him. They congratulate him, thank him, and honor him and all that, but he just offers smiles and waves.

“That’s our Leandro!”

“Leo, my hu-man!”

“Leandro, I’m proud to have served under you!”

Who’s Leandro? Oh well, doesn’t matter.

He pushes past them and sees Xandra close her quarter doors behind her. Ignoring the crowd, he walks up the stairs and looks through the door, already seeing Xandra walking towards the sink to wash her face off for the night.

Lance doesn’t bother to knock.

He steps into the room, and his hand hovers over his bayard. He’s not sure why, because he doesn’t plan on using it—not on Xandra, or anyone else. It’s almost more instinctive at this point. He steps onto the scarlet carpet, closing the door behind him at least to respect Xandra’s secret.

When she pulls up from the sink, she sees Lance reflected through the mirror, and he sees her smile. She looks more exhilarated than before, having time to cool off by fighting off the ship’s invaders.

By fighting The Blade of Marmora.

Upon seeing Lance, she seems to still tense up from the interaction earlier. She seems uneager to interact, but dabs her face with the towel to dry, anyways, turning to him. “Lance… no, _Leandro,_ ” she corrects herself, smoothly, with a bit of a smile. When Lance doesn’t return the smile, she looks down, taking a deep breath, and then meets his eyes. They’re a very human-looking chestnut brown, and when she meets his eyes, they’re clearly apologetic. They read an entire story, but not one he’s looking for. “I’m… sorry about earlier. I took it too far, yeah, I get it. It’s not my place to say, I know, but nobody… nobody dislikes you here. They don’t think you’re annoying, or rude, or cowardly, or anything. You’re… one of us. So if you’re mad about that, that’s what I really meant to say—”

“Alexandra,” His expression is unchanging since his arrival, crossed between confused and hurt, as he repeats, “what’s in the treasurehold.”

The sentence brings a new stack of emotions to the table, and Xandra immediately perks in Lance’s direction. She puts down her towel and rests her hand on the drawer, backing off from Lance a little. She speaks cautiously, as though she were trying to pacify an enraged animal. “Hold on. You’re mad, I get it, but—”

“I’m not mad yet.” Lance interrupts, because it’s true. Everything he’s discovered for certain so far has been… eye-opening, but not inexcusable. Not yet. “What’s in the treasurehold.”

“You already know what it is.” She replies.

A part of him knows exactly what she’s saying. He knows exactly what’s in the treasurehold, but she could still prove him wrong. So he repeats his point. “No, I don’t.”

“You do.”

Lance, with a twinge of desperation that he’d received from Xandra not an hour ago, finally speaks up, hurried and panicked, “Just tell me what it is!”

Xandra pauses, and then takes a breath, closing her eyes before honestly meeting his.

“The Red Lion.”

Lance is taken aback suddenly. It’s the response he expected, yes, but there’s still a strange element of surprise that comes with it. He can’t help but stare at her for a few seconds, and he sees her mouth moving and forming words but he can’t begin to imagine the excuses that come from it. They’re drowned out by his own thoughts and feelings, reminders of betrayal and hurt and things that he didn’t expect. Maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t think they’d come from her, maybe he just didn’t expect the turn of events in general. She’s trying to calm him down, but Lance is having trouble following the situation in general.

“ _What?”_ Lance asks, nearly spitting. Anger doesn’t suit him well, he thinks, because he’s the goofball character. But even though he’s settled into that persona, he doesn’t think he could let this go even if Xandra were to pull out a camera from a hidden crevice and shout ‘pranked!’ He backs away from her outstretched arms, and she understands the cue to take them away from him.

“It’s the Red Lion. I—”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?! You knew! You _knew_ I was a paladin of Voltron, and you knew how much it meant to me! You even knew I held the red bayard, and I thought we were—but—but instead you kept me with everyone else? Why?!” Lance asks, and it’s Xandra’s turn to play the defensive as she shirks away from Lance’s shouts. It isn’t that Lance is scary when mad, it’s just that there’s always something unsettling about a guy who always seems so normal, so rational, to be pressed against a wall.

“You were good at it! You didn’t hate your time here, and if you’d found—or if I told you about the Red Lion earlier, you would’ve—”

Lance doesn’t need her to finish the end of her sentence. For once, he and the voice in his head are perfectly in sync. “So instead of having me leave, you lie and use me—”

“You care about your friends, right?! We’re your friends, too! I was keeping you with us, and you didn’t have to decide between us or Voltron! You’re safe, you’re _happy_ , Leo! Happier than I’ve seen you since forever! Voltron doesn’t need to exist. It’s not this great pinnacle of hope, like you think it is, and you don’t even want to _be_ in it!”

“I _trusted_ you, Xandra!” Lance shoots back, and it wraps up the brunt of the betrayal.

“I’m sorry! I know I fucked up, and I’m sorry!” She earnestly shouts back, and Lance oddly finds himself… calming. He knows he shouldn’t be, and knows he has every right to be angry with her. He _is_ still angry with her, he’s betrayed and frustrated and confused and everything, but there’s satisfaction in having her answer. “Lance, I didn’t get here off of cute smiles and human charm, Lance. That’s how I work, and that’s how things work around here. Earthlings aren’t looked after real nice, if you haven’t noticed, and without me, you’d be _nothing here,_ too. You would’ve been cast away. I would’ve been too, if I hadn’t framed myself as a different race. You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t lied about being the champion or being a member of Voltron. Everyone lies and hides things, and I’m not a saint either!” She retorts, the brutal irrefutable truth of her situation. It doesn’t do anything to help Lance calm down, but Xandra’s eyes float over to the guitar near her bedside, and she manages to whisper, “But I know you didn’t deserve that. I should’ve been honest with you. I’m… sorry. I’m really, really sorry for that. You have no idea.”

Lance doesn’t speak with the same anger as earlier, but his gaze doesn’t lift itself. He doesn’t speak with forgiveness, just an attempt to understand. “How… when… where… how’d you get Red?”

“The Lion?” Xandra asks, and then uncomfortably glances away. “My brother was on the ship that exploded. The one that shot you halfway across the universe. He was a guard. He loved Voltron. He wouldn’t have ever supported the Galra, but you guys blew him up anyways. I thought… I hoped he might’ve been alive, so I looked. Like an idiot, knowing he was already gone. I found a bunch of debris from the explosion. The Red Lion was one. You were another.”

Lance tries to read the answers through the lines, but things aren’t making sense yet. Whether it’s because he’s seeing red (more figuratively than literally) or because he really can’t find method in her madness isn’t clear yet, so he’s silent as Xandra continues. “Voltron isn’t… it isn’t amazing. I’ve made it clear. Nobody is! The Galra Empire isn’t great, Voltron isn’t great, neither of you two are heroes. That’s why we go around, stealing from both. They aren’t good. I was hoping that if I kept the Red Lion in my possession, they wouldn’t be able to form Voltron, but apparently the other Lions are still out there, protecting the universe as good as they ever did. They don’t even need you. You don’t need to go back to them. You could just stay with us, and you could still fly Red, if you want! Lead us into battle with—”

Lance walks past her, turning towards the door before he can hear the rest. It effectively cuts her off, and her words chase him with a more worried, “where are you going?”

“I’m leaving.” Lance replies, voice colder than she’s used to.

“Leaving—” She starts, sounding panicked, before easing into almost a taunting, “where? You don’t have anywhere to go, Lance. You’re a nobody out there. You’re just a space pirate, and now that we’ve got the Blade of Marmora on our tail—they were willing to shoot you down before, what makes you think they’ll change their mind now? Voltron doesn’t need you, the Blade doesn’t need you, and you don’t seem too eager to join the Galra Empire, you’ve got no way back to Earth and even if you did—”

“I’ll figure it out.” With that, Lance shuts the door behind him, the definitive slam covering up Xandra’s exasperated and defeated call of his name behind him, and heads back to the treasurehold.

While he passes Qa’ata, he notices the David Bowie disc holder already in his hands, knowing, and Lance takes it as he walks past him. Lance’s footsteps slow, his expression softening as he stands almost back-to-back with Qa’ata, though they don’t turn to look at each other.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Qa’ata replies. “Do what you feel is right.”

Lance continues to walk to the treasurehold, inserting the key card in its rightful position. He walks through its opening and towards the same pile of coins earlier. The second his hand makes contact with the lion’s red particle barrier, it falls and the coins that had been perched on top of it fall. The clanging of metal on metal reveals the Red Lion, and its eyes blink to light, golden, trained on Lance. The blue lights on its sides and tail come alive, and it shifts, ever so slightly. Lance pulls the red scarf off his shoulders. While he walks towards it, he looks at the tracker on the outside of the Lion, opens it up, and disconnects one of the wires—a trick he’d learned from Qa’ata. He walks inside the Lion, taking in its warmth.

He sits down in his seat, and the engine whirrs to life, a warm purr. He’s not sure whether the sense of longing belongs to him or the lion as they reconnect, but the screen blooms with red as its systems come back to life. His wavelength syncs with his Lion’s, and although Lance hadn’t touched in at least a year, the controls come as easily as breathing—easier, even—and he feels the shifting of the Red Lion as it moves.

Upon initial inspection, Lance doesn’t see a way out of the ship. So he makes one. Red’s maw opens and burns a hole straight through the hull of the ship until it’s large enough for him to leave. Once it is, he braces himself. Part of him tempts him to get out of the ship and go back onto the ship, greet everyone, and talk about everything over drinks. Then another part reminds him that this isn’t where he should be, either, and he steels his resolve and looks out into space through the opening he’s carved for himself.

He jumps through, and red starts flying away. With all of its time alone, it’s fully charged and functional, and Lance sighs as it weaves its way through open space.

“Yeah, I’ve missed you too.” Lance says to Red, resigned, and sinks back into his chair. He lazily pilots into open space and thinks about where he wants to go. He thinks about Xandra’s words and wonders how truthful her words were.

While he’s flying, he leans back and opens the CD case. Where the Song lists are supposed to be shows a map, crudely two-dimensional and not entirely clear, but Lance can approximate where he is from it—at least in this galaxy. He sighs, looking back at the ship behind him. Because of how fast the Lion flies, it looks like a toy from the distance, quaint and faraway, like something his younger siblings would play with in a bathtub.

When he looks in his pocket, he fishes the device Xandra had given him out. He scrolls through and looks at Red’s speakers suspiciously. Flipping through the songs, he fiddles with the controls a bit until he sees a little sideways triangle pop on Red’s screen, corresponding with Lance’s device’s screen. It brings a bit of a smile to his face as he presses the play button, and the pick of an acoustic guitar come through the speakers, fast and hurried, breaking through the silence and making Lance smile.

“ _Tú, tú eres el imán y yo soy el metal. Me voy acercando y voy armando el plan. Solo con pensarlo se acelera el pulso... oh yeah.”_

Lance begins singing along with the lyrics of Luis Fonsi’s Despacito as he flies through space, completely alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wHOOP THERE IT IS. don't look for any meaning, this was just a big alex(andra) this is so sad play despacito meme. it was all setup. there is no storyline. 
> 
> for the actual storyline, i didn't originally plan on having Lance tie in so closely with Xandra's brother (who was a moot motivation in the first place), but it escalated into a parallel. i wanted to put a lot of emphasis on "family", and then "corruption" later on in the story, so the ending turned a little depressing. oops? 
> 
> another thing i didn't plan on: leakira fans likely recognized the monicker the pirates give lance, Leandro. this series won't delve into Voltron: Defenders of Tomorrow, and I actually only learned about it myself while i was halfway through the chapter (lance's guitar-playing scene). lance needed a pseud for a later scene anyways, and i thought this would be a cute origin story for how he ended up with "leandro"—it's not acc a given name, but something he goes by to people who don't know him as well. 
> 
> while this series won't touch V:DoT or leakira, if people are interested, i might write a separate story with it? dunno, we'll see. 
> 
> i hope you enjoyed reading, as i enjoyed writing this chapter, but i'm having more fun writing the next, so look forward to it! i love reading theories, so feel free to comment them!
> 
> #SSB


End file.
